Writer, former first lady Amalia Megapanou dies at age 91

Amalia Megapanou, a writer and folk-art historian best known as the wife of the late prime minister Konstantinos Karamanlis, has died at the age of 91, it was announced on Tuesday.

Nee Kanellopoulou, Megapanou wrote more than a dozen books under the name of her second husband, prominent obstetrician Epameinondas Megapanos.

The niece of a prime minister herself, she married Karamanlis in 1951 and followed him into self-imposed Paris in the 1960s. Their relationship ended in divorce in 1972 on the grounds of irreconcilable differences.

Commemorating her contribution to the letters in a statement on Tuesday, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that Megapanou’s books had taught him “the balance between the public and private, how a personality can be a star while also staying in the background.”

“I bid her a heartfelt farewell as, I am sure, all Greeks do,” Mitsotakis said, calling the writer a “worthy Greek.”