Sofka Zinovieff  Biography

Biography

Sofka Zinovieff was born in London, in 1961. She is half-Russian - her father’s parents were both from St Petersburg and escaped to  England after the 1917 revolution.

Most of her childhood was spent living in a house by the river Thames in Putney, where her father, Peter Zinovieff, had an electronic music studio (EMS). Visitors to the house during the 1960s and ‘70s included composers and musicians as diverse as Harrison Birtwistle and Pink Floyd. Her mother, Victoria Zinovieff, was a psychotherapist.

Several months a year were spent on the Isle of Raasay in the Inner Hebrides, which remains an influence and inspiration.

Sofka went to schools in London and Oxford and then studied social anthropology at Cambridge (getting a first-class degree). During the late 1980s she lived in Greece for several years, while carrying out research for her PhD thesis. It was during this time spent in Nafplio, in the Peloponnese, that her lasting love for Greek culture and language emerged.

During the 1990s she lived in Moscow (where she met her Greek husband, Vassilis Papadimitriou), London (where their two daughters were born) and for several years in Rome.  She worked as a freelance journalist, writing for mainly British publications including The Independent Magazine, The Telegraph Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, The Financial Times, The London Magazine. She also paints and sculpts and all the works of art featured in the site are by her.

Sofka moved to Greece in 2001 and lives by the sea outside Athens with Vassilis and their daughters, Anna and Lara.

 

 

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