(Paperback)

Peter Bien focuses on Kazantzakis' obsession with the demotic, the language "on the lips of the people," showing how it governed his writing, his ambition, and his involvement in Greek politics and educational reform. Kazantzakis' obsession worked against him in his Odyssey and found its natural vehicle only in his translation of Homer's Iliad and

(Hardback)

(Paperback)

A biography of Nikos Kazantzakis. It describes his struggle with political questions that were in reality aspects of a fervent religious search. It features his experiments with communism in turbulent Greece, his visits to Soviet Russia, and the publication of his epic "Odyssey" in 1938.

(Hardback)

Putting Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis's (1883-1957) vast output into the context of his lifelong spiritual quest and the turbulent politics of twentieth-century Greece, this title argues that Kazantzakis was a deeply flawed genius. It covers his life after 1938, the period in which he wrote "Zorba the Greek" and "The Last Temptation of Christ".