Zyranna Zateli

Zyranna Zateli, also spelled Ziranna Zateli, was born in Sochos in northern Greece in 1951. She studied theatre in Athens before concentrating on writing. Her first book, the short-story collection Περσινή αρραβωνιαστικιά (Last Year's Fiancée), appeared in 1984. Στην ερημιά με χάρι (With Grace in the Wilderness), another collection, followed in 1986. These books established the shorter form alongside the expansive novels that would later define her bibliography.

Και με το φως του λύκου επανέρχονται (And with the Wolf's Light They Return), published in 1993, brought a family saga into ten connected tales and received the State Novel Prize in 1994. Ο θάνατος ήρθε τελευταίος (Death Came Last), published in 2001, received the same prize in 2002. It opened a trilogy continued in 2009 and completed in 2021. In 2010 the Academy of Athens recognised her body of work with its novel award.

Zateli's books have travelled through translation as well as Greek editions. Yale University Press published David Connolly's English translation of the 1993 novel as At Twilight They Return in 2016. Her Τετράδια ονείρων (Dream Notebooks), published in 2017, offers another approach to her writing: dreams recorded and shaped into a book rather than a continuous family novel.

In Και με το φως του λύκου επανέρχονται (And with the Wolf's Light They Return), generations gather around Christoforos and an expanding household. Ten linked stories move through family relationships, losses and returns. Mythology, folklore and historical events meet imaginative invention. The English edition's title, At Twilight They Return, gives this Greek novel a different verbal doorway while retaining its structure as a novel in ten tales.

The trilogy Με το παράξενο όνομα Ραμάνθις Ερέβους (With the Strange Name Ramanthis Erevous) comprises Ο θάνατος ήρθε τελευταίος (Death Came Last, 2001), Το πάθος χιλιάδες φορές (Passion Thousands of Times, 2009) and Ορατή σαν αόρατη (Visible as if Invisible, 2021). In the final volume, the fictional Lefka struggles to write a story: hesitation, encouragement and the difficulty of giving words to experience become narrative material themselves. The reader encounters a writer within the fiction, alongside the larger work's concern with presence and absence.

Τετράδια ονείρων (Dream Notebooks, 2017) gathers recorded dream images that also feed her prose. Across these forms, reading involves more than following events. Images, voices and uncertain boundaries ask the reader to notice how a sentence makes the familiar strange.

Look at the Greek title Ορατή σαν αόρατη and identify σαν, a useful word for comparison. Draw a tree and its shadow, then write three original Modern Greek sentences beginning βλέπω, θυμάμαι and φαντάζομαι. Use σαν to compare the shadow with an animal; say which detail you actually see and which you invent. Read your sentences aloud, changing one noun or adjective on a second reading. This small exercise practises comparison and the difference between perception, memory and imagination. The adapted B2 passage offers support; a complete Zateli novel calls for slower reading, a dictionary or a translation alongside the Greek. Her brief interview answer about reading invites that deeper attention.

• Her 1993 novel is organised as ten linked tales.
• The trilogy’s three novels appeared in 2001, 2009 and 2021.
• David Connolly translated the 1993 novel into English, published by Yale in 2016.