Writer Alexis Parnis (née Sotiris Leonidakis), born in 1924 in Piraeus, has died at the age of 99. He graduated from the Gymnasium (Jonidio School) in 1942, when Greece was under Nazi occupation. Even before he was organized in the German Resistance, he hid and rescued a Jewish family along with his father. For this act, the Jan Vansen Foundation would later award both of them the title of Righteous among the Nations.

At the age of 20, Alexis Parnis took part as a captain in the Elassi reserve company in the last battle against the Germans at Peristeri (Kolokinsky Bridge, 9/12/1944). In December, he is badly wounded while fighting the English intervention. In the period 1945-1948 he was a political refugee in Rubik and Bulges. He then serves in the Democratic Army as a war correspondent. From 1949 to 1962 he lived in the USSR. He studies at the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. In 1954, he published his great epic poem Belogiannis in the literary magazine Novy Mir, for which he was awarded the First Prize in Poetry at the Warsaw Festival the following year. The jury that awards him the awards includes Pablo Neruda (Chairman), Nazim Hikmet, Nicolas Guillen, Waris Ivens and others. His name is included in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. In 1960, his play The Island of Venus was staged on the stage of the Mali Theater in Moscow, which ran for two years in 175 theaters of the USSR and other People’s Republics. In 1963 it was also presented in Greece from Kiveli at KTHBE and in 1969 it was made into a film starring Katina Paxinou. In 1966, having already repatriated, Alexis Parnis presents the satirical novel The Fixer. The work was translated into English in 1981, and the critic Thomas Hyde wrote in The Saturday Telegraph: “The Fixer should be required reading for all revolutionaries on Earth.” In 1967, his drama Pasternak Avenue was staged at the O’Neill Theater in the Massachusetts Playhouse. Reviews about the performance, director and actors are laudatory. A few years later, Leoforos Pasternak was also published in a novel version.

His other works: “Prague for All”, “Cinematographer”, “Bandit”, “Odyssey of the Twins” (novels), “Seed of Hope” (novels), “Wings of Icarus”, “White Spot”. “,” Open an account “(theatrical).

Source: RES-IPE