Margarita Liberaki (1919–2001) was born in Athens and raised by her grandparents, who ran a publishing house. She made her first appearance in literature in 1945 with the novel The Trees, while a year later she published her most acclaimed work, Three Summers, which is now considered a standard part of Greek and Cypriot education and was also adapted as a television mini-series in 1995. After divorcing poet Giorgos Karapanos, in 1946, she left with her daughter, later writer Margarita Karapanou, for Paris, where she became associated with Castoriadis, Axelos and Elytis and came into contact with the avant-garde European artistic movements of the time. In Paris, she completed The Other Alexander and in 1952 she started being engaged in play and screenplay writing, including Jules Dassin’s Phaedra (1962).