Gisèle Prassinos (1920–2015)

Gisèle Prassinos was born in Istanbul, Turkey to a wealthy and cultured family of Greek origin. They fled the conflict between Greece and Turkey and emigrated to France when Gisèle was two years old. Her brother Mario Prassinos grew up to be a noted artist and designer. The family lived initially in Nanterre and then moved to Paris. Gisèle's entry into Surrealist circles in Paris at the age of 14 has acquired the status of legend. Her writing was discovered by André Breton and Paul Éluard, and published in the French Surrealist magazine Minotaure and the Belgian periodical Documents 34. She became a literary prodigy. Man Ray took a famous 1934 photograph of her reading her poems to a group of Surrealist writers at Café Cyrano. Her first book, La Sauterelle arthritique (The Arthritic Grasshopper) was published in 1935. In addition to writing novels, poems, and short stories, she also painted and created objects, particularly in fabric. She also translated the works of Nikos Kazantzakis into French. Very little of her own work has been translated into English.