Nikos Casdaglis was born in 1928 on the then Italian-occupied island of Kos. In 1933, after the Great Kos Earthquake, he and his family moved to the island of Rhodes. Shortly thereafter, in 1937, he was sent to Athens for secondary education because the Italian occupying regime banned education in Greek.
During the occupation of Greece by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, Nikos Kasdaglis actively participated in the resistance against the invaders and joined the ranks of the right. In 1943, he was expelled from school. A year later, he was detained by leftist guerrillas for twenty days.
After the liberation of 12 islands from Italy in 1947, he settled first on Kos and then on Rhodes. He lived on the island for the rest of his life.
During the Greek Civil War, Nikos changed his political mindset from the right to the left because of the suffering of the leftists.
In 1957, he married the poet Rena Atanasedi. The product of this marriage is two children.
From 1948 to 1968, Nikos worked as an employee at the Rhodes branch of Zret Bank. During the Greek military coup, he was fired after publishing a statement against the military dictatorship along with 17 other prominent writers. After the coup was overturned, he resumed work, not as an ordinary employee, but as deputy director of the bank.
In 1982, he resigned from banking and continued to write for the rest of his life.
Nikos Kadsdaglis has written a total of 18 books and translated several from French into Greek. Some of his books have been translated into other languages and several of his works have been screenplayed. He has published articles in many Greek magazines and newspapers. He was a member of the Union of Greek Writers and an active member of the Union of Writers. In 1955, he received the State Literary Prize.
Nikos Kasdaglis joined the Kurds in the 1990s and since then the Kurds and their problems have been the main subject of his writings. His books on the Kurdish issue are:
1- Glittering Fire,
2- Allahu Akbar,
3- Blood of the Awakening of the Dead,
His latest book is My Writings on Violence. This book is a selection of articles published between 1952 and 1998, along with photographs of Kurdish graphic artist Sarhad Bapiri. In recent years, he had a book called Ascension to Fire, but it is not known whether he has completed it.
Nikos Kasdaglis was a great Greek writer and a dear friend of the Kurdish people.
On February 17, 2009, the great Kurdish friend and Greek writer Nikos Kasdaglis died at the age of 81 on the island of Rhodes.[1]