The Mauve Umbrella is a story of two worlds - the adult world of approaching war and the children's world of close friendships, rivalry and games of the imagination. Eleftheria lives somewhere in Marousi, Athens, with her parents and younger, identical twin, brothers. It is shortly before the war in 1940 and she is nine, going on ten. The children's best friend is the daughter of a rich family in the neighbourhood. Later, a young French boy arrives, escaping from Nazi occupied France, to live with his French uncle, who lives in the apartment above Eleftheria's family. Alki Zei was born in Athens. From 1954 to 1964 she was a political refugee in the Soviet Union. In 1964 she was forced to flee with the arrival of the Junta. From a young age she wrote scenes for puppet theatres before writing her series of children's books. Her first novel for adults, 'Achilles Fiancée', was published in 1987. She was recognised for her work by the Athens Academy in 2010.

THE MAUVE UMBRELLA

Zei, Alki

Children's Books

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Tina's Web (Aurora New Fiction)

Literature & Fiction

Dramas & Plays

Aurora Metro Press

The Wildcat Behind Glass

Animals

Yonder

The book has received the 2002 Premio Acerbi in Italy. Set in Paris sometime after the 1967 military coup in Greece. Eleni, together with a group of friends and fellow political exiles, finds herself working as an extra in a French film: "The Horror Train". It is not the first time she has been caught up in a deadly drama, nor is it her first ride on a horror train. As the director waves his arms, shouting directions and re-shooting the sequence, Eleni's mind wanders to her first train ride: "Athens-Piraeus. My first long journey by train." "You're Eleni? I'm Achilles." "They don't ask which Achilles. One name is enough..." For the rest of her life, Eleni will be "Achilles' fiancée"; fiancée of the guerrilla leader, the brave, handsome kapetanios whose code name is Achilles. In the demonstrations against the German occupiers of Greece during World War II, in prison where she risks a death sentence during the civil war that followed, in Tashkent where Greek communists fled as political refugees and eventually, in Paris. But throughout, Eleni acquires her own personality with self-determination and independent thinking. As she begins to question the slogans she used to fight for when she blindly followed the leaders of the Party like her fianc, Eleni involves us in her own private world of self-awareness. It is a woman's world, where human warmth and friendships count for more than abstract ideals. The Greek word for a novel is mythistorema, a word that combines myth and history. In her story of a young woman's struggle to survive through a hard period of Greek history, Alki Zei has woven the threads of her own quasi-mythical life into the stuff of history. The novel Achilles' Fiancée has been a top-selling book since it was first published in Greece in 1987. It has also been translated into French, Italian, German, Spanish, Danish and Turkish. "Alki Zei has written history like masters do, gingerly and discreetly." ." Sofia Castellanos, A Cubierta Libros, 2014 "Achilles' Fiancée is a superb book that has marked Greece's modern literature." Demosthene Kourtovic, Scholiastis magazine, 2012 "Good books do not become outdated with time. They are read by new generations of readers, as if they are new every time." Yannis Papatheodorou, Diavazo Magazine, 2012 "Between the lines of the narrative, important issues regarding human dignity and substance, self- determination and freedom, faith and ideology, are touched." George Theocharis, Book Press, 2012 "The narrative becomes immediately compelling because the author manages to convert a biographical story into a collective issue." Anna Paini, Libreria delle Donne di Milano, 1998 Achilles' Fiancée, With a Faber Number Two Pencil and Wildcat under Glass form a sort of trilogy in which 50 years of Greek history is covered by Alki Zei's exquisite and distinguished narrative.

Achilles' fiancée

Genre Fiction

Angelica Vouloumanou

1970 Mildred Batchelder Award (U.S.A.) / 2007 Premio Andersen - Il mondo dell'infanzia (ITALY) A children's novel Wildcat under Glass, first published in 1963 and translated in about 35 languages, is internationally acclaimed as a classic work having been successfully and repeatedly published in many countries apart from Greece until today. The story is set on an island in Greece during the 1930's as the nation is forced into a Fascist dictatorship. It is told through the eyes of a young girl named Melia, who relates the experiences of her family as they are forced to accept life under a repressive government. The book provides an interesting look at an important period of Greek history and tells it from a child's unsophisticated perspective. The naturalness and liveliness of the dialogue is combined with the seriousness and depth of the meaning. In a playful atmosphere, the reader is aware of and enjoys a mature thought that deals with and analyses social visions while trying to discover the threads that move them. The value of the book consists in precisely this combination. One of its virtues and what makes it universal is that the narration, although set in Greece at a particular period of time, seems somehow spaceless and timeless.  "A masterpiece! Undoubtedly perfect, extremely moving. One should not always refrain from expressing one's enthusiasm! This novel sums up all the essential qualities that one seeks in the children's literature of our times. Through a sensitivity always alert, a freshness of the eye, a concrete vision that excludes all moralising prose, Alki Zei succeeds in keeping, from beginning to end, the "childish" tone of the narration in order to deal with overwhelming frankness with a subject of such grave consequence as Fascism, which for once we are not afraid to call by its name... One would need many pages to analyse what makes possible this perfect balance between the daring essence of the subject and the constant complicity of the writer with the children's world. The result is the passionate involvement of the reader, regardless of his or her age." Bernard Epin, L'ecole et la Nation, 1973 "I am one of those readers who cannot understand the difference between children's or adolescent literature and literature for adults. Literature is one, and sometimes its texts are addressed to adolescents, even to children. But they are not meant only for them; a literature that an adolescent and a child can read can certainly be read by a grown-up as well. This is the reason why I think Alki Zei stands out in our post-war literature, not only because of her novel Achilles' Fiancee (1987) but also for her excellent Wildcat under Glass (1963)". Elisabeth Kotzia, Kathimerini newspaper, 2002  Wildcat under Glass, Achilles' Fiancee and With a Faber Number Two Pencil form a sort of trilogy in which 50 years of Greek history is covered by Alki Zei's exquisite and distinguished narrative.

Wildcat under glass

Geography & Cultures

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Books by Zei, Alki