Zorba The Greek

About The Author

Nikos Kazantzakis has been acclaimed by Albert Schweitzer, Thomas Mann, and critics and scholars in Europe and America as one of the most eminent and versatile writers of our time. He was born in Crete in 1883 and studied at the University of Athens, where he received his Doctor of Law degree. Later he studied in Paris under the philosopher Henri Bergson, and he completed his studies in literature and art during four other years in Germany and Italy. Before World War II he spent a great deal of his time on the island of Aegina, where he devoted himself to his philosophical and literary work. For a short while in 1945 he was Greek Minister of Education, and he was president of the Greek Society of Men of Letters. He spent most of the later years of his life in France. He died in Freïburg, Germany, in Octóber 1957.

He was the author of three novels which have been enthusiastically received in the United States and England: Zorba the Greek, The Greek Passion, and Freedom or Death. He was also a dramatist, translator, poet and travel writer. His crowning achievement, which he worked on over a period of twelve years, was The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. In Kimon Friar's magnificent verse translation, this modern epic was published in the United States in 1958 and was acclaimed by critics and reviewers in such superlatives as "a masterpiece," "a stirring work of art," "a monument of the age," and "one of the outstanding literary events of our time."