Maria Iordanidou

Maria Iordanidou was born in Constantinople, the daughter of the English merchant marine engineer Nicholas Kriezis and Euphrosyne Magou. From 1901 to 1909 she lived with her parents in Athens, but after their separation Maria returned to her birthplace and enrolled in the American college there. From 1914 to 1919 she lived - trapped by the outbreak of the First World War and the unrest of the Russian Revolution during her visit to relatives in Russia - in Mariupol in the Caucasus. She managed to survive alone by teaching English classes, while at the same time attending classes at a Russian high school. In 1919 she returned to Constantinople and worked for an American trading company. In 1920 she was transferred to Alexandria, Egypt, where she came into contact with intellectual circles, became a member of the Egyptian Communist Party and in 1923 married the educator Iordanis Iordanidis. After her marriage, she settled with her husband and mother in Athens, where she worked at the embassy of the Soviet Union. In 1931 she divorced Iordanidis, with whom she had by then had two children. In 1939 she was dismissed from the embassy and resumed teaching foreign languages. During the German occupation, her house was destroyed and she herself was persecuted and imprisoned in various camps. She collaborated with the KKE's periodical. She trained as a translator. She first appeared in literature at the age of sixty-five with the publication of the novel Loxandra. She was honored for her work with the Golden Cross and the Officium of the Lord of the Ecumenical Throne by the Patriarchate of Constantinople (1978). Her works have been translated into many foreign languages. Maria Iordanidou belongs to the Greek prose writers of the interwar period, especially to those writers who were loved by the reading public - her works, with Loxandra as a prime example, were also broadcast on television - and were ignored by critics. The main characteristics of her work are the autobiographical element that dominates more and more strongly during her literary career, her neglect of a systematic distribution of her narrative material and the immediacy, precision and naturalness of her speech. For more biographical information on Maria Iordanidou, see Afroudakis Angelos, "Maria Iordanidou", in "Interwar prose; from the first to the second world war (1914-1939)", vol. 4, Athens, Sokolis, 1992 and now, "Iordanidou Maria", in "World Biographical Dictionary", vol. 4, Athens, Athens Publishing House, 1985.