Christopher DeMorteau, author of Pellegrina, is the son of a mailwoman and a merchant navy mariner.

As a child, he met his father in ports across the world—Odessa, Aruba, Singapore—wherever the tanker came to dock.

 

Trained as a Light Infantry Scout, he went on to serve for two decades as an Army Legal Officer, with deployments in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and beyond.

 

After a brief period as an armed contractor,

he joined the International Committee of the

Red Cross, taking part in missions across Iraq, Nepal, Lebanon, Laos, West Africa, Pakistan,

Sri Lanka, and elsewhere.

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​His academic work—particularly on the law of civil wars—has been widely cited, including in the Revised Commentary to the Geneva Conventions.

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Today, he manages a law firm in Greece with a reach throughout Europe,

and lectures occasionally on Humanitarian Law, Operational Law, and the methodology of war crimes investigations.

He has published monographs and numerous scholarly articles under his real name, Constantine Mortopoulos.

 

Pellegrina is his first—and last—work of fiction.