Sotiriou was born in Aydın, in western Anatolia and at that time part of the Ottoman Empire, as the daughter of Evangelos Pappas and Marianthi Papadopoulou,[2] in a wealthy and polyglot bourgeois Rûm family who lived in a stately home.

After her father, an entrepreneur, went bankrupt and her family became poor, Dido, who at that time was about eight years old, was sent to her wealthy uncle and his wife in Athens, where later she was educated.

[4] However, as she herself explained, she developed in that period a strong sense of social justice, especially because of the contrast between her own privileged situation and the humble way of living of her parents and siblings.

In 1935, she met in Geneva Vladimir Lenin’s comrade Alexandra Kollontai and in 1945, she was cofounder of the Women’s International Democratic Federation in Paris.

[2] She fought against the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas and later, in the period of Axis occupation, she joined the Communist Party of Greece and worked for an underground anti-fascist newspaper.

In the preface Sotiriou mentions that she wrote the novel on the basis of the memories of a little Asia Minor farmer named Axiotis Manolis, who had lived the events as an eyewitness.

[2] Sotiriou was chief editor of a women's magazine, Gynaika ("Woman"), and foreign policy commentator on various newspapers, as Neos Kosmos ("New World") and the Greek Communist Party's daily Rizospastis, where she became editor-in-chief from 1944.