Greek · b. 1883
Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times
Greece's greatest modern writer, whose novels — especially Zorba the Greek — capture the conflict between the spiritual and the sensual in the Greek soul.
Nikos Kazantzakis was born in Heraklion, Crete in 1883. He studied law in Athens, then philosophy in Paris under Henri Bergson, before embarking on a lifetime of travel, scholarship, and writing that would take him across Europe, Asia, and Africa. He served as Greek minister of public education after World War II and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times.
His most celebrated works are Zorba the Greek (1946), the story of a young intellectual transformed by an older man’s zest for life, and The Last Temptation of Christ (1955), a controversial novel that imagines Christ’s human doubts and desires. Both were adapted into major films — Zorba with Anthony Quinn (1964), The Last Temptation by Martin Scorsese (1988).
Kazantzakis died in 1957. His epitaph, which he wrote himself, reads: I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. He is buried on the Venetian walls of Heraklion. His work is a sustained meditation on the tension between reason and passion, spirit and flesh — with Greece, and specifically Crete, as both setting and symbol.
by Nikos Kazantzakis
Kazantzakis's spiritual autobiography — addressed to his Cretan ancestor El Greco — tracing his intellectual and spiritual journey from Crete through Athens, Paris, Mount Athos, Russia, and across the battlefields of ideas of the 20th century.
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by Nikos Kazantzakis
An intellectual writer goes to Crete to manage a mine and encounters Zorba — a broad-chested, life-devouring man who teaches him what it means to live fully and without fear.
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by Nikos Kazantzakis
A radical reimagining of the life of Christ — depicting Jesus as a man torn between the flesh and the spirit, tempted on the cross by a vision of the ordinary human life he might have lived.
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by Nikos Kazantzakis
In a Greek village under Turkish occupation, villagers chosen to play Christ and the apostles in a Passion play find themselves transformed by their roles — as a group of real refugees arrives seeking help and the village is forced to choose.
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by Nikos Kazantzakis
Set in Crete during the late 19th-century struggle for independence from Ottoman rule, the novel follows Captain Michalis — a man of elemental passions — as he leads his people in revolt.
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All Nikos Kazantzakis novels in order — from Zorba the Greek to Report to Greco. The complete guide to the great Cretan novelist's work, with reading order and best starting points.
guide
New to Kazantzakis? Zorba the Greek is the right starting point for almost all readers — but this guide explains what to expect and which novel suits different types of reader.
Zorba the Greek (1946) is the most accessible starting point — direct, physical, full of philosophical argument in dramatic form. The Last Temptation of Christ (1955) is his most controversial and spiritually dense work. The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel is for serious readers only.
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