Nikos Kavadias was born in Manchuria, in the town of Nikolski Usuriski, near Harbin, where his father, a native of the island of Cephalonia, was a prosperous merchant. Because of the turbulent events taking place in the area at the time, Kavadias’s father brought his family back to Greece. During the Russian Revolution, Nikos’s father disappeared and the family had no idea of his whereabouts for seven years. Having served time in a Soviet prison, he never regained his health. Kavadias enrolled in medical school in 1928, but because of his father’s incapacity, he was forced to work as a clerk in his uncle’s shipping office. He published his first poems in the Great Greek Encyclopedia under a pseudonym and began to frequent the literary circles of Piraeus.
When his father died in
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Citation: Holst-Warhaft, Gail. "Nikos Kavadias". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 February 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12307, accessed 25 November 2024.]