Nikos Kazantzakis

Set before the start of the First World War, this moving fable sees a young English writer set out to Crete to claim a small inheritance. But when he arrives, he meets Alexis Zorba, a middle-aged Greek man with a zest for life. Zorba has had a family and many lovers, has fought in the Balkan wars, has lived and...

Freedom and Death is Kazantzakis's modern Iliad. The context is Crete in the late nineteenth century, highlighting the epic struggle between Greeks and Turks, Christianity and Islam. A new uprising takes place, rivalling those of 1854, 1866, and 1878, throwing the island into confusion once more. In the village of Megalokastro, a Cretan resistance fighter, Captain Michales, is matched by...