Vassilis Alexakis facts for kids

Vassilis Alexakis (Greek: Βασίλης Αλεξάκης) (25 December 1943 – 11 January 2021) was a Greek-French writer and self-translator. He translated many novels in Greek to French. Alexakis was born in Athens, Greece.

In 1974 he published his first book Le Sandwich, written in French. The first book directly written in Greek was Talgo, published in 1981. He self-translated Talgo into French.

In 2006, Les mots étrangers was translated by Alyson Waters and published under the title Foreign Words; this was the first of his novels to be translated into English.

In 1995, he received the prestigious Prix Médicis for La langue maternelle. In 2007, he received the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française.

Alexakis died on 11 January 2021, aged 77.