Novel · A way to begin
Zorba the Greek
Βίος και πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά
Nikos Kazantzakis · 1946
Synopsis
A young man of letters arrives in Crete to work a mine and takes on as foreman an old workman he met at the harbour. One has read the Buddha and hesitates before everything; the other eats, dances, seduces and decides. The work site makes little progress, the winter passes, and the boss watches his employee live.
Context
The book draws on a real adventure: the author had worked a lignite mine at Prastová, in the Mani, with a Macedonian labourer named Giórgis Zorbás, and the venture had failed. He completed the final version in 1943, having begun it on Aegina two years earlier, when news reached him that his companion had passed away in Skopje; the action moves to Crete, and the labourer becomes Alexis. The French translation by Yvonne Gauthier appeared from Éditions du Chêne in 1947 and was immediately seized; the English one by Carl Wildman followed in 1952. Michel Cacoyannis brought it to the screen with Anthony Quinn.
Who it is for
A novel of conversation and digression, more philosophical than one expects from the film. The figure of the boss as narrator sometimes irritates, and that is intended.
Prizes and reception
A worldwide publishing success, carried by its English translation of 1952 and then by the cinema, it is the book that made its author known outside Greece.