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Greece

Author · Greece

Yannis Ritsos

Died in 1990

Yannis Ritsos, born in Monemvasia on 1 May 1909 into a family of great landowners, saw his family ruined and decimated: his mother and elder brother dead, his father and sister committed to institutions. Himself stricken with tuberculosis, he recovered in 1931 and joined the Communist Party. In 1936, under Metaxas, copies of his first major poem were burned at the foot of the Acropolis. Deported from 1948 to 1952 to Lemnos, Ai-Stratis and Makronisos, he buried his poems in bottles; the colonels deported him again. He received the Lenin Peace Prize in 1977 and died in Athens in 1990.

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