Michael SiaterlisΜιχάλης Σιατερλής

Michael Siaterlis writes mystery fiction and short stories. His novels move between the classic police procedural and Greek myth: from the chief inspector hunting a serial killer in 'Hecatombe', to the Erinyes awakened to deliver justice in 'Eumenides' and the folklore of 'The Kalikantzaros', pairing the tight plotting of crime fiction with themes of guilt, justice and mortality. Alongside them, his collection 'Mikres Istories' ('Short Stories') turns to simple, everyday life: small human moments told with tenderness, humour and nostalgia. He writes in Greek, with 'Hecatombe' also available in English.

I was born in the late 1960s in Athens and grew up in Marousi.

My childhood dream was to become a nuclear physicist! In the end I became an electronics engineer. There was, of course, only one thing I detested: computers. So, naturally, I became… a programmer and data-processing specialist!

As a programmer, I wrote code for hours on end, days, to be precise, and everything was in its proper order, just as it should be, until… one day, one night, to be accurate, I used my keyboard to write something different.