Guest of the ilb 2003
Eugene Trivizas,
author of more than 100 children's books, was born in Athens, Greece in
1946, and is one of the most important contemporary Greek authors for
children. He received his LLB degree in Athens, followed by a BSc
in Politics and Economics. The following year he received an LLM
degree in Comparative Criminal Law and Procedure from the University of
London, where he was also awarded his PhD in Criminology in 1979.
He is currently Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at
the University of Reading, Great Britain. For more than thirty
years, he has been involved with almost all genres of literature:
fairytales, poetry, stories, humorous historical texts, opera
librettos, children's theatre, comics and educational software.
Trivizas' picture book 'Ta tría mikrá lykákia' (Engl: The Three Little
Wolves and the Big Bad Pig), published in 1993, became an international
bestseller, after his adaptation of the classical fairytale had lain
around on his desk for years, because no publisher was willing to
publish a book in which the wolf is not evil, but good.
Modernised into a work as entertaining as it is profound,
it has been translated into seventeen languages and has been
incorporated into the Heinemann collection of the ten best classic
picture books ever published. In September 2003 a miniature and
pop-up celebratory edition of the book was published, and translated
into seven languages. Trivizas' surrealistic humour and his
creative use of language are unique. A charming teller of
fairytales, Trivizas must be taken seriously in his unseriousness, in
his infectious enthusiasm for the limitless, invented, improbable,
and the phantasmagoric, for beauty and tragedy in the world.
Behind his stories' fabulous and humorous "masks", serious social
issues are concealed. His novel 'Hé teleftaía mávri gáta' (Engl:
The Last Black Cat), which was published in 2001, is the story of a
ruthless hunt in a society full of prejudice
and superstition, and a plea for an end to exclusion, persecution and
cruelty - persistently portrayed from the perspective of an animal protagonist, "the last black cat". The novel was translated into many European languages.
'Ta 88 dolmadákia' is an extraordinary work; this "interactive" book
and its sequel, “Ta 33 poz poympiinia” (Engl: The 33 pink coloured
rubies) animate young readers to make their own decisions about the
story's order of events. His more recent publications include the
Olympic novel 'Despina kai to peristeri' (2001; Engl: Despina and the
Dove), which has been published by the Organising Committee for the
Olympic Games Athens 2004, and 'Ena helidoni gia tin Europi' (2003;
Engl: A Swallow Over Europe) - an as yet unparalleled book project for children about European integration.
Eugene Trvizas handles the topic of child abuse
extremely sensitively in the book “To Lipimeno Arkoudaki” (Engl: “The
Little Bear in Trouble”, 2005), which was printed in 2005, but it was
only made available to selected individuals and institutions who are
specifically trained to explain this difficult subject to children
apropriately. In 2007 “The Village of Joy” was published, the proceeds
of which go to Greek SOS-Children’s villages. His most recent project
is the adaptation of his book “To pontikaki pou ithele na angixei ena
asteraki” (Engl: The little mouse who wanted to touch a star) into an
animation film, which is intended to help this genre of Greek cinema to
gain international recognition.
Eugene Trivizas has received the most prestigious
Greek awards and a large number of international honours - he was a
finalist for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2006, amongst
others. In 1997, he won a spectacular court case against Coca
Cola, who wanted to register the term "Fruitopia" in Greece as a
trademark for soft drinks. Trivizas' homonymic work 'Frutopia'
had namely already existed as a successful TV series and theatre play,
and the title of a comic series since 1985. Trivizas' works have
been adapted for theatre, TV and radio, have become required reading in
Greek and American schools, and have been translated into many
languages. Today he is the most acted playwright in Greece. The
author lives in Reading and Athens.
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