Rhea Galanaki

Rea Galanaki (Greek: Ρέα Γαλανάκη) is a Greek author who was born in Heraklion, Crete in 1947. She studied history and archaeology at the University of Athens. She has published novels, short stories, essays and poetry books.

Her six novels (The life of Ismail Ferik Pasha, I shall sigh aw Louis, Eleni or Nobody, The Century of Labyrinths, Silent deep sea, Jouda’s Fires and Oedipus ’ Ashes) have established her as one of the leading Greek novelists. She has touched subjects as the double identities, the division between two countries, the impossibility of nostos, the meaning of nationality or femininity, of history itself; close to these, and during last years, she has been focused at subjects as the reappearance of racism, fascism, crisis and the contemporary social changes. She is widely known for her unique, thoughtful and sensitive way of writing. Her prose is recognized at her novels, based either on up to day, or on historical problems. She is also considered as the renovator of the so called historical novel. Critical essays on Rhea Galanaki’s works have been published not only in Greek newspapers and literature magazines, but, among others, in the T.L.S.(2004, on the occasion of Olympic Games), in Le Monde and Le Soir (1992), the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sudwest Presse, Frankfurter Rundschau (2002).

Her novels have been translated in 15 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Czech, Bulgarian, Swedish, Lithuanian, Turkish, Arab, Chinese, Hebrew and Albanian.