Vassilis Vassilikos is a prolific Greek

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, and a diplomat

Diplomat

A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...

.

Biography

A native of the northern Greek island of Thasos

Thasos

Thasos or Thassos is a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea, close to the coast of Thrace and the plain of the river Nestos but geographically part of Macedonia. It is the northernmost Greek island, and 12th largest by area...

, Vassilikos grew up in Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki , historically also known as Thessalonica, Salonika or Salonica, is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the region of Central Macedonia as well as the capital of the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace...

, graduating from law school there before moving to Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 to work as a journalist

Journalism

Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...

.

Because of his political activities he was forced into exile

Exile

Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...

 following the 1967 military coup

Greek military junta of 1967-1974

The Greek military junta of 1967–1974, alternatively "The Regime of the Colonels" , or in Greece "The Junta", and "The Seven Years" are terms used to refer to a series of right-wing military governments that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974...

, where he spent the next seven years.

Between 1981 and 1984 Vassilikos served as general manager of the Greek state television

Elliniki Radiofonia Tileorasi

The Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation is the Greek state-owned public radio and television broadcasting corporation. It is a member of EBU.Since 70's ERT is part of the Eurovision Song Contest, organized by EBU...

 channel ET1.

Since 1996, he has served as Greece's ambassador to UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

.

As an author, Vassilikos has been highly prolific and widely-translated

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

. He has published more than 100 books, including novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

s, plays

Play (theatre)

A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

 and poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

. His best known work is the political novel Z (1967) (English language ISBN 0-394-72990-0 or ISBN 0-941423-50-6), which has been translated into thirty-two languages and was the basis of the award-winning film Z

Z (film)

Z is a 1969 French language political thriller directed by Costa Gavras, with a screenplay by Gavras and Jorge Semprún, based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Vassilis Vassilikos. The film presents a thinly fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of democratic Greek...

directed by Costa-Gavras

Costa-Gavras

Costa-Gavras, is a Greek filmmaker, who lives and works in France, best known for films with overt political themes, most famously the fast-paced thriller, Z...

 (with music by Mikis Theodorakis

Mikis Theodorakis

Mikis Theodorakis is one of the most renowned Greek songwriters and composers. Internationally, he is probably best known for his songs and for his scores for the films Zorba the Greek , Z , and Serpico .Politically, he identified with the left until the late 1980s; in 1989, he ran as an...

).

In 2008, Vassilikos was among to 41 other personalities of Greece that condemned the action of the withdrawal of Ersi Sotiropoulos's book Zigzag Through the Bitter-Orange Trees from the Greek school libraries, after the appeal of insurance measures by Konstantinos Plevris against to the Ministry of National Education of Greece for this issue. In 2001, Petros Tatoulis had asked the withdrawal of this specific book and he characterized this as pornographic due to the provocative sexual scenes that it contains.

Selected bibliography

• The Monarch
• And Dreams Are Dreams
• The Photographs
• The Plant, the Well, the Angel
• The Coroner's Assistant
• The Harpoon Gun
• The Few Things I Know About Glafkos Thrassakis
• Z
  Z (film)
  Z is a 1969 French language political thriller directed by Costa Gavras, with a screenplay by Gavras and Jorge Semprún, based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Vassilis Vassilikos. The film presents a thinly fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of democratic Greek...
  
  

Translations

• The Photographs, tr. M. Edwards (1971; repr. 1972)
• The Plant, The Well, The Angel A Trilogy, tr. E. Keeley, M. Keeley (1964)

External links

• Vassilikos' home page
• Vassilikos' poems from Translatum's anthology of Poets from Thessaloniki