Dinos Christianopoulos was born in 1931 in Thessaloniki. He attended the University of Thessaloniki where he received a degree in literature. After completing his military service, he worked for several years as a librarian in the Municipal Library of Thessaloniki before opening a proofreading office. In the course of time he founded Diagonal, a literary journal responsible for introducing many new authors to the public, Diagonal Publications, a small printing press, and the Diagonal Art Gallery, a showroom for the exhibition of works by Thessalonian artists. Despite his reputation as one of Greece’s finest writers, he has known the material privations familiar to poets who attempt to live by their pen. Besides his literary pursuits, the author is an ardent enthusiast of rebetic songs – Greek urban music of the twentieth century somewhat akin to the blues. He has worked tirelessly for its propagation and has himself composed and recorded a number of rebetic songs. To date, his poetry and prose have been translated into more than a dozen languages by no fewer than sixty translators.Christianopoulos has remained selfdetermined, isolating himself from politics, government, and public honors and popular causes, which in his view undermine the individual’s freedom. This attitude is reflected in the nineteenth-century rustic house at the top of Thessaloniki in which he lives at the present time.