Eleni Dikaiou: Author – Greece

Magic is what you see in children’s eyes when you show them your love.

E. Dikaiou

eleni dikaiou was born in 1953 in New Ionia, near Volos to a family of Greek refugees from the shores of Asia Minor. As a child, she loved to read and dreamt of becoming an archaeologist and a writer. Her favorite stories were those of Homer, as well as the ancient Greek myths; these were stories that took place not in anonymous towns and villages but close to her, and with heroes not merely princes and princesses but with names similar to hers and those of her surroundings.

Dikaiou’s first story was published when she was fourteen in the popular Greek magazine, Diaplasis ton Paidon. When she graduated from high school, she received a scholarship to study in the United States, but family circumstances prevented her from pursuing such an endeavor; instead, she moved to Athens and began working for a Greek telephone company with public relations. The spark for writing children’s literature came with a contest in the young readers-young adults’ genre, with the theme of Asia Minor, its refugees, and their life before and after the forced migration of 1922. This led her to write her first novel for children, The Girls in the Sailors’ Suits, based on the life of Dikaiou’s mother and her mother’s twin sister in Smyrna, as well as in the refugee settlement of New Ionia. The novel received the literary award of the Smyrna and Asia Minor Cultural Organization in 1991, was translated, and has been included in the mandatory reading list by both public and private schools and in the curriculum of the Sorbonne Institut National de Langues et de Cultures Orientales (National Institute of Oriental Languages and Cultures).

Since then, Dikaiou has published twenty-eight books for children, and many of her stories are featured in anthologies and other collective works. For her writing, she draws inspiration from her childhood’s reading of ancient Greek fiction and mythology as well as Greek history, both ancient and recent, something which can be seen in works such as The Gods Do Not Die in Pella, which narrates the life of Alexander the Great; Under The Walls Of Troy, which surrounds the myth of the Trojan war; and Looking for Lost Heroes, which relates the stories of young children during World War II in Athens. Dikaiou also creates stories from simple observations of her surroundings, such as finding a white cat in the forest, or from intricate social issues such as young people with disabilities. She writes for a wide range of ages, and employs diverse genres, from fairy tales with anthropomorphic animals to realistic stories depicting themes such as civil war, conflicts, and love.