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Stratis Tsirkas (1911-1980) [In Greek: Στρατής Τσίρκας] is the pen name of Yannis Hadziandreas, one of the most prominent Greek writers of the twentieth century.

He was born on 23 July 1911 in Cairo, Egypt, and in 1928 he graduated from the commercial section of Abbet School in Cairo. Over the next ten years he worked as an accountant in Upper Egypt and there he wrote his first poems and short stories about the life of the fellahin (the Egyptian farmers). In 1930 he meets the Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy, about whom he wrote later two influential books, Cavafy and his Era (1958) and The Political Cavafy (1971). He wrote poetry, short stories, novels, essays, press reports and translated several major European writers.

In 1937 he married Antigoni Kerassoti and in July of that year he traveled to Paris to take part at the Second International Writers' Congress for the Defence of Culture against Fascism. There, together with the American poet Langston Hughes, they wrote the poets' 'Oath' to Federico Garcia Lorca, which was recited at the Congress by the French writer Louis Aragon.

In 1938 he moves to Alexandria and a year later he takes up the position of manager at the tannery of the Greek industrialist Mikes Halkousis, a job which he keeps until his departure to Athens in 1963.

From a young age he became involved in Egypt's leftist movement and around 1928 he joined the circle of the known Egyptian-Greek communist, Sakellaris Yannakakis, in Cairo. In 1935, together with the Cypriot poet, Theodosis Pieridis, he joins the multi-ethnic Egyptian organisation, League Pacifiste, which was founded by the Swiss communist, Paul Jacot-Descombes. Together with Pierides he co-ordinates the Greek section of the organisation. During that period he began to publish articles in the League's official organ, Civilisation which appears in French, Arabic and Greek.

In 1942, together with Pieridis, Odysseas Karayannis, Stratis Zerbinis and others, he joins the editorial team of the anti-fascist political review Ellin