Petros Markaris

Petros Markaris (Greek: Πέτρος Μάρκαρης * 1 January 1937 in Istanbul) is a Greek writer well known for his stories with commissioner Kostas Charitos playing in Athens.

Biography

Petros Markaris, son of an Armenian entrepreneur and a Greek mother, visited the Austrian High School in Istanbul and studied after his Abitur some years in Vienna and in Stuttgart. He was also for many years a Turkish citizen. Markaris speaks and writes in Greek, Turkish and German. Today he lives in Athens.

Before he began to write he studied national economy. Later he wrote several plays, under it the history of Ali Retzo was a Co- author of the film producer Theo Angelopoulos (1991 "The Suspended Step of the Stork", 1995 "The Gaze of Odysseus" as well as 1998 "Eternity and a Day"). In addition he translated several German dramas into Greek like e.g. Goethe's Faust I and Faust II as well as Brecht's "Mother Courage".

His novels have always also a society-critical tendency and play often in the environment of former socialists, which lost their ideals and now scruplesless make money. The Kostas Charitos books are very polular in several European countries as Greece, Germany, Italy and Spain.

External links

* [http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=4CCE7773-CF85-43BE-A7CE-9E60FFABBA79 Achim Engelberg ‘Foreigners not wanted’ – A conversation with Petros Markaris]