Margarita Karapanou

Margarita Karapanou (Greek: Μαργαρίτα Καραπάνου; 19 July 1946 – 2 December 2008) was a Greek novelist, most known for her first novel, Kassandra and the Wolf. Her novels have been translated into many languages.

Margarita Karapanou
Born	(1946-07-19)19 July 1946 Athens, Greece
Died	December 2, 2008(2008-12-02) (aged 62) Athens, Greece
Occupation	novelist
Nationality	Greek
Period	1976–2008

Life and career

Margarita Karapanou was born in Athens, Greece, the daughter of novelist and dramatist Margarita Liberaki and Giorgos Karapanos, a lawyer and poet. Her parents divorced and her mother moved to Paris shortly after she was born. Karapanou grew up in both Athens, with her maternal grandmother, and with her mother in Paris. She studied philosophy and cinema in Paris, and nursery school teaching through distance education in London. In Paris, she was friends with Marie-France Ionesco, the daughter of Eugène Ionesco.

Karapanou worked as a nursery school teacher and also at a private kindergarten. She struggled with bipolar disorder throughout her life.

Kassandra and the Wolf was translated into English by Nikos C. Germanacos and published by Harcourt Brace in 1976 before it was published in Greece.

Her own translation into French of her 1985 novel The Sleepwalker won the Prix du Meilleur livre étranger in 1988.

Her diaries, Η ζωή είναι αγρίως απίθανη: Ημερολόγια 1959-1979 (Life Is Wildly Improbable: Diaries 1959-1979), were published in November 2008, shortly before she died of respiratory problems on 2 December 2008.

Works

Novels

• Η Κασσάνδρα και ο Λύκος [Hē Kassandra kai ho lykos] (Hermēs, 1977). Kassandra and the Wolf, trans. Nikos C. Germanacos (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976; Clockroot, 2009).
• Ο υπνοβάτης [Ho hypnovatēs] (Hermēs, 1985). The Sleepwalker, trans. Karen Emmerich (Clockroot, 2011).
• Rien ne va plus (Hermēs, 1991). Trans. Karen Emmerich (Clockroot, 2009).
• Ναι [Nai] (Ōkeanida, 1999). Yes.
• Lee και Lou [Lee kai Lou] (Ōkeanida, 2003). Lee and Lou.
• Μαμά (Ōkeanida, 2004). Mama.

Other

• Μήπως; [Mēpōs?] (Ōkeanida, 2006). Maybe? Conversations with psychologist and writer Fotini Tsalikoglou.
• Η ζωή είναι αγρίως απίθανη [Ī zōī́ eínai agríōs apíthanī́] (Ōkeanida, 2008). Life Is Wildly Improbable: Diaries 1959-1979 (Edited by Vassilis Kimoulis)

In anthologies

• "The hour of the Wolf". In Rotter, P. (1975). Bitches & sad ladies: An anthology of fiction by and about women. New York: Harper's Magazine Press. ISBN 9780061275159
• "Word". in Biguenet, J. (1978). Foreign fictions: 25 contemporary stories from Canada, Europe, Latin America. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 9780394724935
• "Kassandra" and "The Wolf". In Manguel, A. (1993). The gates of paradise: The anthology of erotic short fiction. New York: C. Potter. ISBN 9780517880500
• "Kalymnos". In Leontis, A. (1997). Greece: A traveler's literary companion. San Francisco, Calif: Whereabouts Press. ISBN 9781883513047
• "Island Melancholy" (2008). Mediterranean Passages: Readings from Dido to Derrida. University of North Carolina Press ISBN 9780807831830

Further reading

• Friar, K. (1977). "Book Review: Kassandra and the Wolf". World Literature Today, 51(2), 316-317. (JSTOR Arts & Sciences V Collection) ISSN 0196-3570
• Bryfonski, D. (1980). Contemporary literary criticism: Volume 13. Detroit, Mich: Gale Research. ISBN 9780810301245
• Hohlfelder, C. A. (1997). Modes of expression and representation in modern Greek women's prose from 1938-1987. [Columbus] : Ohio State University. OCLC 38109068
• Adamopoulos, A., & Karapanou, M. (introduction). (1999). Psémata páli. Athi̲na: Ekd. Agra. ISBN 9789603253075
• Tsalikoglou, Phōteinē (2008). De m'agapas, m'agapas : ta paraxena tēs mētrikēs agapēs ; ta grammata tēs Margaritas Lymperakē stēn korē tēs Margarita Karapanou (1ē ekd. ed.). Athēna: Ekdoseis Kastaniōtē. ISBN 978-9600348378.
• Bogdanou, C. (2004). Revisioning Cassandra: Defying daughters and master narratives in Florence Nightingale's "Cassandra" and Margarita Karapanou's Kassandra and the wolf. OCLC 54444553
• Hembree, B. (2011). "Book Review: The Sleepwalker". World Literature Today, 85(4), 65-66. (JSTOR Current Scholarship Journals). ISSN 0196-3570
• Kotsovili, E. (2012). Giving an account of herself: Life-writing in Maro Douka, Rea Galanaki and Margarita Karapanou. University of Oxford & St. Cross College (University of Oxford). OCLC 863584651
• Theodosatou, V. (2013). Aselēnois nyxi: G. Vizyēnos, M. Karapanou, G. Cheimōnas : treis psychanalytikes anagnōseis. Ασελήνοις νυξί : Γ. Βιζυηνός, Μ. Καραπάνου, Γ. Χειμωνάς : τρεις ψυχαναλυτικές αναγνώσεις. ISBN 9786188018655
• Nigianni, B. (2015). "Geographies of Affectivity in the Writings of Margarita Karapanou: Phenomenological and Psychoanalytic Interpretations". English Academy Review, 32(1), 96-108. doi: 10.1080/10131752.2015.1034948
• Athanasiou-Krikelis, L. (2016). "Twisting the Story: Margarita Karapanou’s Rien ne va plus and Amanda Michalopoulou’s Θα ήθελα as Metaautobiographical Novels". Journal of Modern Greek Studies. doi: 10.1353/mgs.2016.0018

External links

• Her page at the website of the Hellenic Authors' Society (Greek)
• A page at the National Book Centre of Greece