Margarita Karapanou was born in Athens in 1946 and raised in Athens and Paris. One of Greece’s most beloved authors, she was the author of five novels. Her first novel, Kassandra and the Wolf, was translated into four languages, and was originally published in English by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1974. The Sleepwalker has likewise been translated into four languages, and Karapanou’s own French translation of the book, Le Somnambule (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), won the French national prize for the best foreign novel, an honor previously awarded to Lawrence Durrell, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. She died in 2008. Karen Emmerich is a translator of Modern Greek poetry and prose. Her translations include I’d Like by Amanda Michalopoulou (chosen for the top 25 translated books of 2008), Poems (1945–1971) by Miltos Sachtouris (nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Prize in Poetry and praised by Harold Bloom as revealing “not only the disturbing intensity of the original but also a remarkable diction and poetic pacing of her own”), and The Few Things I Know About Glafkos Thrassakis by Vassilis Vassilikos, which the New York Times called a “superb” translation of “a deft and witty reflection on writing as well as a moving portrait of the artist in as political exile.” She is the recipient of translation grants and awards from the NEA, PEN, and the Modern Greek Studies Association.
