The Third Quarter

T. (Theophilos) D. Fragopoulos was born in Athens, originally from Zakynthos. His father was a senior military officer and his mother came from the Theotoki and Polyla families. He studied at the Law School of the University of Athens and tourism and economics at Surrey University in England. Fluent in many foreign languages, he travelled to numerous countries abroad, including Lebanon and Tunisia, where he worked as a bank clerk and as a shipping company manager. During the German occupation and the civil war, he enlisted in the National Resistance, initially as a member of the United Youth of the Sacred Brigade and subsequently of the organisations ESAS, RAN and EDES. From 1948 to 1950, he served as a reserve officer in the Armoured Corps, whilst he also fought against the April 1967 junta. In 1950, he was appointed head of the foreign advertising department at the Greek Centre for Tourism Studies.

He also served as director of the Greek National Tourism Organisation (1959–1964) and gave lectures on modern Greek literature as a visiting professor at the universities of Bochum in West Germany and Boston in the United States. In the field of literature, he worked on novels, poetry and theatre, whilst also writing essays. He made his debut in 1943 with the publication of the poem ‘Mantua’ in the magazine Palmos, and in 1953 he published the poetry collection Poems. He contributed to the magazines Philological Chronicles, The New Hellenics, Contemporary Letters, Seasons, I Synecheia, Tomes, Stathmoi, the newspaper Kathimerini, and others. A member of the National Society of Greek Writers, he was awarded the First State Theatre Prize for his play Karteria, the Ourani Prize from the Academy of Athens for his collection of essays Tagliche Ernte, and the Frederik Mathiou Literary Prize (1995). His writings have been translated into French, English and Italian, whilst his poems have been included in foreign anthologies.