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Zorba the Greek (Paperback)
by Nikos Kazantzakis
| Category:
Greek literature, Meaning of life, Fiction |
| Market price: ¥ 158.00
MSL price:
¥ 128.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Beautifully written with honest, flowing dialogue, this book is a great story for all seasons. |
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Author: Nikos Kazantzakis
Publisher: Touchstone
Pub. in: December, 1996
ISBN: 0684825546
Pages: 320
Measurements: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01421
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0684825540
Language: English (translated from Greek)
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- Awards & Credential -
The author is one of the most brilliant writers. |
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- MSL Picks -
In approximately 1914, before World War I, the narrator, a young cerebral writer who wants to become rooted in the earth and physical labor, rents a lignite mine on the beautiful island of Crete. As he is about to depart, he meets a much older, experienced, and very earthy Alexis Zorba, whom he hires to be his foreman and cook. What he learns, and we through him, may change your life. First, a warning: to appreciate this amazing book, one must be able to look past the misogyny and sexism of life on Crete in 1914, and focus on the love and relationship of two men. Zorba plays the santuri, has had a family and many lovers, has fought in the Balkan Wars, has lived and loved-his knowledge is rooted in love, suffering, sweat, and blood. He is a simple but deep man who lives life without shame, bares himself, has no guile or guise, and lives every moment fully--not only his joy, but his tears, his compassion, his anger, his hunger, his thoughts and his questions. His character is perceptively portrayed by the first person narrator who is a contemplative who gradually comes to see the poverty of a life always filtered through philosophical, religious, or cultural judgments. He immediately appreciates Zorba's wonder at life, Zorba's music and dance, and the way Zorba sees the same old things every day as if new. Zorba is life itself, a fleeting moment with a discrete beginning and final end. The narrator especially learns that by holding on to his safety and security he has sacrificed much by failing to live to the fullest like Zorba. The book is absolutely beautifully written, makes you cry at the beauty and wonder of being alive, makes you ache for loved ones who are gone, and cry at our ultimate fate, death, in the face of which we must live with ever more Zorba-like zest.
(From quoting Stephen Smith)
Target readers:
Fiction and philosophical readers.
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Nikos Kazantzakis was born in Crete in 1885. He studied at the University of Athens where he received his Doctor of Laws degree, later in Paris under the philosopher Henri Bergson, and completed his studies in literature and art during four other years spent in Germany and Italy. Also author of The Last Temptation of Christ and Saint Francis, not to mention one of the best spiritual autobiographies I have ever read, Report to Greco.
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From The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, published in Greek in 1946 as Vios kai politia tou Alexi Zormpa. The unnamed narrator is a scholarly, introspective writer who opens a coal mine on the fertile island of Crete. He is gradually drawn out of his ascetic shell by an elderly employee named Zorba, an ebullient man who revels in the social pleasures of eating, drinking, and dancing. The narrator's reentry into a life of experience is completed when his newfound lover, the village widow, is ritually murdered by a jealous mob.
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Michail Kyril (MSL quote) , USA
<2008-07-12 00:00>
The classic movie starring Anthony Quinn was based upon this book.
As the story goes, Alexis Zorba is an old Greek workman who accompanies the narrator, a bookish philosopher, to Crete to exploit a mine he owns there. Zorba is a figure created on a huge scale: his years have not dimmed the flame by which he lives, the gusto with which he responds to all that life offers him, whether he is organizing the work at the mine, coping with mad monks in a mountain monastery, embellishing the endless tale of his past adventures, or making love to Dame Hortense.
Nikos Kazantzakis is one of the most distinguished and individual of modern Greek writers, and in Zorba the Greek he has written a book that lives by a vitality and rhythm that seems to owe little or nothing to the contemporary traditions of the Western novel. It is bursting with wit, fantasy, and enjoyment of life, and at the same time has a continual undertone of serious philosophical reflection. Zorba the Greek is Rabelaisian, a Don Quixote in which the role of the knight and Sancho Panza are reversed, plus a distinct Arabian Nights touch. |
A guest reviewer, USA
<2008-07-12 00:00>
Alexis Zorba is the kind of guy you always hope to meet at some time in your life - an ebullient, enterprising, inventive, indefatigable man who has a million stories to tell and is willing to go anywhere and do anything, but with the wisdom and discretion that come with age. In Nikos Kazantzakis's "Zorba the Greek," he becomes the close friend of the nameless narrator, who is lucky enough to make his acquaintance and hires him to be a foreman in his lignite mine in Crete. Zorba is in his sixties but still spry, lean, and tall, a jack-of-all-trades who has traveled extensively throughout the Balkans and western Asia, and an indulgent lover of wine, women, and song. He works hard and he plays hard, if you'll pardon the cliche.
As the narrator (whom Zorba simply calls "boss") and Zorba develop a working relationship as the mine becomes operational with the aid of Zorba's organizational and managerial skills, the notion emerges that the two men are complementary halves of the same personality. The narrator is a book-learned and deeply spiritual man devoted to both Dante and Buddha; the former representing his contemplation of death and the afterlife, the latter his efforts to relinquish his sexual and material lusts in his discontentment with the earthly life. Zorba, on the other hand, irreligious and lacking formal education, learns solely from his experiences and his adventures and believes in living as though as every minute were his last, not that he is reckless or self-destructive or mindlessly hedonistic. The narrator is concerned with the metaphysical whereas Zorba is immersed only in the pleasures of the physical world.
Although much about Zorba's character is defined by private pains in his past, he functions primarily as a social animal who leaves a strong impression on just about everyone he meets. He plays at seducing an elderly French lady named Dame Hortense, a former cabaret singer whose legendary beauty has been ravaged by time and who is sadly deluded into thinking he plans to marry her. An unsavory incident at a corrupt monastery exposes him as the craftiest of opportunists, yet he displays heroism when he tries to protect a dishonored widow from being murdered by outraged villagers. Far from the geriatric stereotype of being set in his ways, he is as many different kinds of men as he wants or needs to be as the situation requires. "I think I must have five or six demons inside me!" he excitedly tells his boss, who agrees that we all do.
This very nicely written novel abounds with rhetoric about the Meaning of Life, which Zorba and the narrator presume to discuss without knowing the answers, but language and metaphor are more important here than the ontological content. The narrator is constantly seeing signs of God and symbols of life in the delicacy and mutability of nature, from butterflies to birds to flowers to the color of the sea; Zorba has taught him to learn by observing the world around him in addition to just reading the words of others. So uniquely spirited and inspiriting is this book that it would sing and dance like Zorba if it could. |
A guest reviewer, USA
<2008-07-12 00:00>
This novel should be looked at in two ways. First, as a masterful charcter sketch of an aging man who refuses to let time get the better of him. Zorba is a complex character who, frankly, is not always in the right. Initially he appears as the macho, almost stereotypical male. He is a womanizer (widows only) who does not think women are capable of any complex thought or understanding what is means to be a man. Despite this, Zorba is unable to destroy the fragile emotions of a local widow and becomes engaged to her. He feigns disinterest when she later dies, but is privately disconsolate. Zorba was a good soldier who now has developed a disdain for killing and defends the weak. He voices his distrust of organized religion, yet thanks God when fortunate things happen. Kazantzakis, like Thomas Hardy in his later novels, does not allow the reader to completely like or understand a character - they are dynamic and constantly revealing new traits.
Second, this is a novel of self discovery and developing inner strength. Through the living side-by-side with Zorba, the narrator discovers that he has, in essence, wasted his life - he has not yet lived. By changing his views and adopting Zorba's philospohy of living for the experiences of life, the narrator is forced to admit he is wrong and has been wrong for many years. He learns the life is meant to be lived, not idled away. People learn by experiencing things, one is not able to life vicariously through superficial possessions or relationships. We must live optimistically and look forward to the future.
This is an excellent novel that has a sensual, lyric translation. Kazantzakis weaves his philopshical beliefs seamlessly into his narrative... it is a mortal sin to violate the great loves of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm."
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