Greek author Dionysis Haritópoulos has died at the age of 79. The writer had been hospitalized in recent weeks at an Attica hospital due to a serious health condition. The news of his passing was announced by TOPOS publishing house, with whom he collaborated for many years. “We write it as he would have wanted — he didn’t ‘leave,’ he didn’t ‘depart,’ none of that. Modest, resilient, and true to his word in his life and his writing,” the announcement read.
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Who was Dionysis Haritópoulos?
Dionysis Haritópoulos was born in 1947 in Piraeus, where he worked various manual labor jobs at the port and in the surrounding machine shops. He abandoned two attempts at higher education — one in Athens and one in London — at an early age. He worked in advertising until 1990.
His final book, published in 2022, was The Unruly Ones (People and Events). Among his other works was a biography of resistance fighter Aris Velouchiotis, titled Aris: Leader of the Unruly, as well as the autobiographical novel Love Affairs in the Post-Junta Era, along with many other titles.
He was married to journalist Malvina Karali.
The official announcement from TOPOS publishing house
“Dionysis Haritópoulos has died. We write it as he would have wanted — he didn’t ‘leave,’ he didn’t ‘depart,’ none of that. Modest, resilient, and true to his word in his life and his writing.
A true son of Piraeus, with roots in the Messa Mani region on his father’s side and the mountain village of Mikro Chorio in Evrytania on his mother’s side, he was — as he himself often said — grateful to have had the fortune of living through hard times in Piraeus, where the port and its people gave him crash courses in survival, dignity, and human understanding, as he worked from a young age in demanding physical labor.
From his very first book in 1976, Dionysis Haritópoulos earned the admiration of literary critics and readers alike — along with their inability to categorize him. Unclassifiable, uncategorizable, autonomous — these are just some of the words that followed him throughout his career. He belonged to no literary school, movement, or circle, and he certainly never followed the dictates of his time. He was a category unto himself. A genuinely non-conformist spirit whose writing, across all 24 of his books, radiates the incomparable allure of the authentic — and almost always the deeply personal. Those books are his one and only legacy to the world.
Dionysis Haritópoulos collaborated flawlessly with TOPOS publishing house from its founding in 2007. During that time, 12 new titles were published and 12 previous ones were reissued — the entirety of his earlier work.
Dionysis — all of us here at TOPOS say farewell to you like a silent circle dance, watching you dance one last time the only song you ever danced to: the Byzantine-inspired Tsitsanis composition ‘Perhaps Tomorrow.’ And we hold close, as a parting gift, the words you chose as the opening of your final book:
I will always stand with the barefoot,
outside the Winter Palaces, even if they are worse
than those within, because they have justice on their side.
A warm embrace to your worthy son Kostas and your brother Yiannis.
TOPOS PUBLISHING HOUSE”
