Dhimitër Pasko (Romanian: Dimitrie Pascu;[1] 13 September 1907 – 4 May 1967) was a well-known Albanian writer, literary critic and translator.[3] Mitrush Kuteli was born Dhimitër Pasko in the town of Pogradec at the shores of Lake of Ohrid, son of Pandeli and Polikseni.[4] Kuteli studied at a Romanian commercial college in Thessaloniki, later moving to Bucharest where, in 1931, he graduated in economics with a dissertation on the banking system in the Balkans.[11] He published his first authored book, Netë shqipëtare (Albanian nights) in 1938, a compilation of eight tales of village life from his native Pogradec.Pasko, as with other Albanian writers of the time, accommodated the imposed cultural doctrine of Zhdanovism by translating Soviet-approved Russian authors, although he found himself able to translate his favorite Russian, Romanian, and Spanish writers, publish tales and verse for children, and adapt Albanian oral verse to prose.