Book Review - Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

 Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis, translated by Carl Wildman

London: Faber & Faber, 2016 (First published in Greek 1946, in English 1952)   ISBN 9780571323272

My wife is a huge fan of this book, and the movie that sprang from it. As I understand it, she had to read Zorba at school, and the experience turned her into a lover of literature. We were talking about Zorba a couple of weeks ago, and she was flabbergasted that I hadn't read the book, and could barely remember the movie (which I saw decades ago). So, I decided to pick up a copy, and I'm glad that I did.

Zorba the Greek is a meditation on life: on living life rather than looking at it from the outside, on jumping into experiences rather than missing out through fear or doubt, and about looking into the future, rather than dwelling on the past. These opposites are drawn out via the relationship between Zorba and the narrator of the novel, who as a writer is grappling with these very problems. Zorba is the everyman we wish to be: fighter, worker, lover, enjoyer of the gifts life has to offer. The narrator is all of the rest of us: full of fear and doubt, afraid to jump into life to be taken along by the current, and forever searching for something greater that we are never sure actually exists.

Zorba knows and understands the venality and corruption of the human race, and yet loves all in spite of that. He has worked through his passions and come to the realisation that all humanity is worthy of our love, especially those that are impinged upon by religion and class. He states that he has learned that there is no nationality and no religion, just good or bad people, and to take those people as they come. While the narrator works hard on his book about the Buddha and questions earthly activities, Zorba has accepted that the life he has is the one he must live to the fullest.

The life the narrator and Zorba share on Crete is by turns funny, heart-warming, and tragic. While the narrator has gone to Crete to both live a "real" life and to eschew his normal writerly existence, Zorba can't help but to take on everything with gusto, from digging in a mine, loving the roué Bouboulina, to eating a freshly cooked lamb and drinking wine. He has an inexhaustible energy, and a capability to see everything with the wonder of a first encounter, that entrances both the narrator and us as readers.

In the end, the money-making ventures all turn to dust, and Zorba and the narrator part, both to continue living in their own separate ways, and to be dragged along by the vicissitudes of history. This final section of the novel is almost unbearable, as we see that together the narrator and Zorba were vibrant, and apart, less so.

This book went much deeper than I thought it would - highly recommended.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell