He passed away at the age of 74 Mirsini Zorba. The deceased was Minister of Culture in the SYRIZA-ANEL government (August 2018 – July 2019), MEP (2000-2004) and first director of the National Book Center (1995-1999).

Her death became known from a post on her Facebook page, which was reprinted by her partner Antonis Liakos.

“Last text of Mirsini

The word that fits this short horizon of mine is non-existence. It cannot be described because it is a place, a time. Last week, in a conversation with a doctor, I realized that we are stopping chemotherapy, it does not work, and there is no alternative. Therefore, non-being is that which best expresses, most accurately expresses the future. Of course, all the time, throughout the year, through a contraction that is constantly growing, the time when his hourglass is empty, fear swells, in which at the beginning there were some cracks, some hopes, some maybe, and little by little fear occupies all existing time and is so absolute that you are no longer afraid, because there is nothing moving, flowing in it. There is only what you live by and that, on the one hand, is gloomy and ominous, a dystopia, on the other hand, there is real life, this is every day that you strive for, take care of. Food, reading, the weather outside, beautiful flowers, friends, communication, conversations, above all interests, the power of ideas that never ceases to exist and which manages to radiate out of time. So there are two sides, and life is one that wins every day, so this solid mass of fear stays there, frozen and hardened, and allows you to live the way you live. Further, looking up, non-existence is the most realistic… It’s a little funny, of course, no non-existence is realistic, unless you see it from the side, and I see it now from a very close distance.

He passed away some time ago.

Mirsini Zorba served as Minister of Culture (August 2018 – July 2019), Member of the European Parliament (2000-2004), First Director of the National Book Center (1995-1999) and Publisher (Odysseus publications, 1973 – 1992).

She was born in Athens in 1949, studied at the Faculty of Law of the University of Athens (1968-1972) and received her Master of Philosophy of Law from the University of Rome as a Scholar of the Government of Italy (1973-1974). Her doctoral dissertation is entitled “Public Policy on the Book” (University of Panteillon, 1992). He taught cultural theory and politics at the University of Athens (1992-1995 and 2005-2007) and at the Greek Open University (2006-2012). She founded the Children’s Rights Network (2004), a voluntary organization with a special focus on refugee children, for which she also created the first school in the summer of 2015. In 2022, the Sapienza University of Rome honored her with the title of its Distinguished Alumnus and gave her name to the Laboratorio di Studi Neogreci of the Department of European, American and Intercultural Studies.

He resisted the dictatorship as a member of PAM, the Greek European Youth Movement and the first edition of Anti. She co-founded the publishing house Odysseus (1973), she translated and made Gramsci’s works famous in Greece. In the post-colonial period, he was a member of the internal KKE, K.E. YOU (1987) and the State movement. In 2000-2004, he was elected a member of the European Parliament for PASOK, participated in the European Socialist Group and the Committee on Culture of the European Parliament. In 2009–2015, she succeeded Nikos Temelis as director of the political office of former Prime Minister Kostas Simitis. In 2018, Alexis Tsipras invited him to the post of Minister of Culture.

Her interview with “K” in 2019

He is the author of The Politics of Culture – Europe and Greece in the Second Half of the 20th Century (Patakis, 2014) and Andreas Papandreou, Cultural Portrait (Pole, 2019). Her written work includes articles in foreign and Greek scientific journals, as well as in a Greek magazine and daily press. For publication: Notes from the Age of Expectations.

Mirsini Zorba was a woman who wanted to change the world, like so many of her generation. But he wanted to change it with books because he thought books were like grenades. You open them and ideas and feelings come out. Books are doors to open up and see the world, and her whole life has been tied to this idea. As both a publisher and creator of EKEVI, she was interested in how books, reading, ideas, and culture would achieve what they usually don’t. In disadvantaged areas and vulnerable layers. He believed that social inequality and social stigma were widened and reinforced by unequal access to the world of ideas and art. Expanded access to and participation in cultural events has also been a central theme in all of her speeches, from the European Parliament, the Children’s Rights Network to her tenure at the Ministry of Culture. Her vision was summed up in two words: cultural democracy. These two words will accompany her name in our memory.