Paris (AFP)

Novelist and journalist, but also designer and filmmaker, Vassilis Alexakis, who died Monday at the age of 77, has spent his life moving back and forth between two cultures and two languages, French and Greek.

The most French of Greek writers (but we can reverse the formula, so much he was imbued with these two countries) had the characteristic, rare among bilingual authors, of translating himself, a bit like the Irishman Samuel Beckett.

His work focused on otherness, exile, religions, European identity or the fate of languages, between biography and history, detective novel and fantasy.

Author of around twenty bittersweet novels, tinged with irony and dark humor, Vassilis Alexakis was awarded the Alexandre Vialatte Prize 1992 and the Albert Camus Prize 1993 for "Before", the Medici 1995 for "The Mother Tongue" , the Prix de la Nouvelle 1997 from the Académie française for "Papa and other news" and the Grand Prix du Roman 2007 from the Académie Française for "Ap. J.-C".

In 2012, he received the Prix de la langue française for his body of work.

Cultivated, laughing and adept at self-mockery, this pipe-smoking humanist, who lived between Paris and Athens, first wrote in French before "reconnecting" with his country and focusing on Greek.

But since the 1980s, even though, as he said, his "memory was more Greek than French", he actually wrote his books twice.

"I start with the version that corresponds to my characters, their identity and the geography of the novel," he explained to + L'Orient Littéraire ". Then I translate this version into the second language. But this translation is in reality an enrichment, a rework of the original text ".

Thus, he first wrote "Mother Tongue" in Greek before switching to French.

But, when it came to publishing the book in Greece, he corrected the Greek version according to the French text.

- Prize for a comedy film -

Likewise, in 2015, on the occasion of the release of "La Clarinette", a tribute to his deceased editor Jean-Marc Roberts (boss of Stock), against the backdrop of a Greece ravaged by the socio-economic crisis, he said to the weekly Paris-Match: "To talk about Greece, memory, homeless people in Athens, I started it in Greek. But, because of Jean-Marc's illness, I switched back to French" .

Afterwards, he managed to unify everything.

“This dual membership is a source of fatigue but it is also an opportunity,” he summarized.

Born in Athens on December 25, 1943, Vassilis Alexakis arrived in France at the age of 17 thanks to a scholarship.

He does not speak French.

In the 1960s, he graduated from the Lille School of Journalism (ESJ, 38th promotion).

He returned to his country to perform his military service but returned to France shortly after the military coup of 1967.

He will collaborate with Le Monde (notably Le Monde des livres), La Croix or France-Culture, and write radio plays.

His first novel, "The Sandwich", appeared in 1974, followed, among others, by "Talgo" (1983), "Identity Control" (1985) or "Paris-Athens" (1989).

In 2007, he signed "I will forget you every day", a tribute to his mother, who died years before: "You forgave me more readily my jokes at the expense of the popes than my spelling mistakes", he wrote.

Vassilis Alexakis was close to left-wing political leader Alexis Tsipras and was symbolically on the list of the radical left-wing Syriza party in European and municipal elections in the 2000s.

Besides a few books of aphorisms and cartoons, he has written comedy films, shot in Greece, including "Les Athéniens", prize 91 for the best film at the Chamrousse festival.

© 2021 AFP