Theodor Kallifatides

Theodor Kallifatides was born in Molaoi, Laconia, in 1938 and moved to Athens in 1946. He attended Karolos Koun’s drama school before emigrating to Sweden in 1964. There he studied philosophy at Stockholm University. Learning another language became part of a literary career joining Greek experience to Swedish expression.

His Swedish debut was the poetry collection Minnet i exil (Memory in Exile, 1969). He taught practical philosophy at Stockholm University from 1969 to 1972 and then edited Bonniers Litterära Magasin until 1976. Novels, poems and essays developed alongside translation. He brought writers including August Strindberg and Ingmar Bergman into Greek, and Yannis Ritsos and Mikis Theodorakis into Swedish.

Kallifatides also developed Greek versions of his own books. Μια ζωή ακόμα (Another Life) was published in Greek in 2016; the Swedish Ännu ett liv followed in 2017. In a Greek interview he described how writing this book helped him recover a connection with his language. Slaget om Troja (The Siege of Troy), published in Swedish in 2018, returned to the Iliad through a modern wartime setting. His work makes language, remembered places and storytelling active parts of cultural exchange.

Kallifatides often brings a large historical question into a small human encounter. Migration is experienced through unfamiliar speech, everyday work, friendship and the effort to find a place among others. Greek memories travel into Swedish prose, while Greek versions create another relationship with readers and the language of childhood.

Μητέρες και γιοι (Mothers and Sons) explores return, memory and the transmission of a family story. Brev till min dotter (Letters to My Daughter, 2012) takes a different route: its exiled Ovid addresses his daughter, turning an ancient Roman writer’s displacement into fiction. These letters belong to the novel’s imagined world. In The Siege of Troy, a teacher tells children about the Trojan War while their Greek village faces bombing during the Second World War. The ancient narrative becomes a way to think about violence and human vulnerability.

Another Life turns towards the difficulty of continuing to write and the renewal that language can offer. Its Greek title leaves room for both duration and addition: life continues, and another possibility opens. This interest in ordinary words supports a reading attentive to context. A small change in placement can make a familiar word carry a different emphasis.

Begin with the Greek title Μια ζωή ακόμα and the adapted passage. Sort three new examples into time and quantity: Μαθαίνω ακόμα ελληνικά, Θέλω μία ακόμα λέξη and Δεν έχω τελειώσει ακόμα. Explain which sentence means still, which asks for one more, and which means not yet. Then write a short exchange with a partner about a language you are learning. Use ακόμα twice with different meanings and read the exchange aloud. The exercise follows the book’s concern with language and renewed beginnings through a useful everyday word. Greek practice uses the Greek text; a Swedish original offers a separate reading experience.

• His literary debut was a Swedish poetry collection in 1969.
• He translated literature in both directions between Greek and Swedish.
• The Greek Μια ζωή ακόμα (Another Life, 2016) preceded the Swedish Ännu ett liv (2017).