Andreas Tsakalis, the youngest son of displaced parents from Asia Minor, was born in 1937 in Nea Apolonia near Thessaloniki, Greece. In 1941, Andreas lost his father who was one of the first to be executed by the Germans during their occupation in Greece. After the end of the war, the remaining family moved to Thessaloniki, where young Andreas spent the rest of his teenage years.

At the age of 18, and before his mandatory draft to the Greek Army, young Andreas wrote his first novel, Το Μικρό Χωριό της Λίμνης (The Small Village by the Lake), published few years later by Difros, one of the main publishers at that time in Athens, Greece.

A short time after the book's publication, the Greek government tried Andreas for the "anti-government" and "radical" views in his novel. Soon after his trial and acquittal, Andreas left Greece for Europe. After a short stay in Germany he later moved to Sweden where he met, studied and collaborated with Professor Antonis Mistakides/Mesevrinos, a Greek scholar and head of the Modern Greek Literature Department at the  University of Lund, Sweden.

In 1965, Andreas transferred to Charles University in Prague (Czechoslovakia) and later he attended FAMU, a film academy, where he met the Czech writer, Milan Kundera, a Professor of European Literature, for whom he admired and respected. As a result of their friendship, Andreas was the first Greek writer to translate Milan Kundera’s work to Greek with the novel The Joke (Το Αστείο), published by Kalvos / Athens in 1971. The translations introduced Kundera's work to the Greek audience. Starting with the novel, The Joke, he is also the only Greek translator who translated many of Kundera's books from their original Czech manuscripts (some handwritten, others typed), sent to Andreas by Kundera himself or by his French agent, Chevallier (editions Gallimar), Paris, France.

Beside Kundera, Andreas also translated several other modern Czech and Russian writers, all from their original languages. During his stay in Prague, Andreas was working very close with Dr. Jan Binder at
Odeon / Krasna Literatura, one of the state's primary book publishers. There, Andreas was part of the lector’s of foreign book critic group and played a significant role in deciding which Greek books were to be translated and later published in Czechoslovakia.  Dr. Jan Binder introduced Andreas to many other Slavic authors’ writings that later resulted in translations of their works.

In 1975, Andreas left Europe for the United States, where he lives with his wife and daughter.

Even though most of his early years were mainly devoted to translations, Andreas continued to write his own novels in Greek, publishing them in his native Thessaloniki where he continues to maintain very close ties with his family and friends.

Please note: Some of the titles of the translations and novels are in Greek. If you do not have Greek fonts installed on your computer, they may not appear correctly. To obtain free Greek fonts and for installation instructions, click here.

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