Kay Cicellis

Kay Cicellis (1926–2001) was born to Greek parents in Marseilles, where she spent her first nine years. Having learned French and English in the nursery, she spent her later childhood in Athens and on her father’s native island of Cephaloni. Her first stories, smuggled out of Athens during the Nazi occupation, were published in the British military press when she was a teenager. Her first story collection, The Easy Way, appeared with an introduction by Vita Sackville-West in 1950. After The Way to Colonos, Cicellis published a second collection, Death of a Town, and two novels, Ten Seconds from Now and No Name in the Street. She went on to become known as the preeminent Greek-English translator of her time, while working actively to oppose the right-wing dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974.