Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis

Zorba the Greek   Nikos Kazantzakis

Overview:

The novel tells the story of the narrator's friendship with a lively 60ish-year-old lover, fighter, adventurer, musician, chef, miner, storyteller, dancer ... the occupations are endless. This is Zorba, described by the narrator as "the man I had sought so long in vain". They spend a year on Crete together, Zorba managing the lignite mine that the narrator is financing as a project to bring him into closer contact with working-class men, whose honest, simple lifestyles the narrator admires but cannot emulate. It is a tale of Zorba's seductions, most memorably of Madame Hortense, the heavily made-up, big-buttocked, ageing courtesan who offers the two men hospitality and a little more, and of the narrator's melancholy "life-and-death struggle" to write an account of his Buddha while waiting for Zorba to return from the mine and make his supper.

Zorba the Greek is rich in the sights, sounds and smells – wild sage, mint and thyme, the orange-blossom scent worn by Madame Hortense, the citrus and almond trees – of life on Crete: the rabbits eaten, the sea that both men plunge into, the wine drunk. The lament of the santuri (the musical instrument Zorba carries with him everywhere and cares for like a child) provides the background accompaniment to their adventures. The novel was aptly described by Time Magazine in its 1953 review as "nearly plotless but never pointless".

Even though it opens in a cafe with fishermen sheltering from a storm, a novel set on a Greek island should be the perfect summer read. Yet although sea, sand and sex abound in the pages, a cloud passes in front of the hot Cretan sun in the final third of the novel. Zorba the Greek opens with the narrator grieving over the departure of his friend, Stavridaki, who has gone away to fight; it ends with the narrator grieving again for Stavridaki, and for the loss of much more. This is a novel of many deaths, from the butterfly forced out of its cocoon too soon to die on the narrator's palm, to the unexpected brutality of the mob execution of the narrator's lover.

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And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!