Ebook: Yannis Ritsos: Selected Poems

About this author

Yannis Ritsos is considered to be one of the five great Greek poets of the twentieth century, together with Konstantinos Kavafis, Kostas Kariotakis, Giorgos Seferis, and Odysseus Elytis. The French poet Louis Aragon once said that Ritsos was "the greatest poet of our age."

He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times. All nominations have been unsuccessful, arguably due to his left-wing political beliefs.

When he won the Lenin Peace Prize (also known as the Stalin Peace Prize prior to 1956) he declared: "this prize is more important for me than the Nobel Prize".

His poetry has been banned in the past at times in Greece, due to his left wing beliefs.

Yannis Ritsos was born in Monemvassia (Greece), on May 1st, 1909