About the Author
Yannis Ritsos (19091990) is one of Greeces finest and most celebrated poets, and was nine times nominated for a Nobel Prize. Louis Aragon called him the greatest poet of our age. He wrote in the face of ill health, personal tragedy and the systematic persecution by successive hard-line, right-wing regimes that led to many years in prison, or in island detention camps. Despite this, his lifetimes work amounted to 120 collections of poems, several novels, critical essays, and translations of Russian and Eastern European poetry.The 1960 setting, by Mikis Theodorakis, of Ritsoss epic poem Epitaphios was said to have helped inspire a cultural revolution in Greece. David Harsent has published ten collections of poetry, winning many awards including the Forward Prize. His collection, Night (Faber, 2011), won the 2012 Griffin International Poetry Prize, having been shortlisted for the Costa, Forward and T.S. Eliot awards. He also is a TV scriptwriter, and has published several crime fiction novels under pseudonyms.