The 3 best books by Nikos Kazantzakis

Essentially Greek, despite the circumstantial Turkish rule over Crete when Nikos Kazantzakis came to the world. Because without a doubt Kazantzakis is one of the cultural references of the twentieth century of the old Hellenic empire, rediscovered for the general public by the film of Anthony Queen making his literary protagonist Alexis Zorbas, but previously recognized by the good readers who already around the world could find his first works drop-wise.

And like a good Greek, Kazantzakis prints to his works that extreme Mediterranean light of islands thanks to whose vital flash the modern world was born with its vital dilemmas and odyssey, with its theater and its fictional literature born millennia ago from among gods, heroes and chroniclers capable of awakening the common imagination of an entire planet.

Heir to the Nobel Prize for Literature but finally disinherited from glory as the hero Achilles, at the last moment. In spite of everything, there will always be his novels so that each one can pick up from his light, the reflection that reaches him the deepest.

Top 3 Recommended Novels by Nikos Kazantzakis

Zorba the Greek

Erecting a character like that cultural totem that transcends the times is only at the height of writers like Cervantes o Shakespeare. It is not a question of comparing the significance of the characters or their value.

The issue is about the depth, of those ways of getting from a world not so common as literature, to the whole world. And no, that a movie has been made is not the excuse. Because certainly the life and work of countless world literature characters have also been brought to the screen ... Of course, if the great geniuses of literature balance and compensate the rest of the components of a plot to make that whole of the masterpiece, in Zorba there is only Zorba, for better and for worse, so that it stands out above all things with its edges and its human dichotomies and its miseries. Everything is deeper and more transcendent in Zorba because the whole plot revolves around him, his discovery and analysis from the closeness of someone who tries to scrutinize him like a surgeon of the soul.

Zorba does not give in to the politically correct nor does he assume heroic patterns. He lives his tragicomedy with the intensity of the madman and at times with the brilliance of the wise man. In books, wisdom is sometimes sought, ways of seeing the world in a transformative way for the better. Zorba seems back from everything and faces the trompe l'oeil of his open grave existence as a Dorian Gray trapped on an island and discovered as a new Robinson Crusoe.

Zorba the Greek

The poor man of Assisi

It is daring to approach a fictionalized biography. Even more so about characters whose documentation to be collected does not even contain an oral testimony. His miracles, his chronicles, the worldwide scope of his evangelizing purpose are known about San Francisco.

But drawing from there a biography completed with that brilliance that exploits the anecdotal is at times daring if not risky. Even more so when it comes to a sacred character. The question is to begin by demystifying the saint, giving him a name that already leads us to the beginning, towards the human being who is still nothing except his poverty. For an author like Kazantzakis who could pass through atheism from his initial socialist convictions, this work must have been that fall from Saint Paul's horse. Or perhaps just an exercise of liberation, of humanization of a character that impacted him and from whom he rescued the most transcendent, the human capacity for resilience, effort, dedication.

Perhaps it is a question of good communism, of the one that does not come to power but surrenders to the conviction of faith and hope, especially among the disinherited on Earth by their own brothers.

Christ crucified again

Since the message of Christ was printed in the Bible, the contradictions of a Church in charge of patrimonializing the legacy of God have been openly manifested.

The first stone on which Christianity was built already seemed condemned to support all kinds of misunderstandings interested in favor of power, of the will to power over consciences with the fear of religion as the perfect tool. We are in the early twentieth century in the town of Likóvrisi preparing for Holy Week. In the meantime, the poor neighbors of an attacked town flock to Likóvrisi in expectation of fraternal help.

In the paradox of the representation of Holy Week and the neglect of the brothers about to be massacred, the plot of a story is awakened that places the characters in front of new Pilate and new Sanhedrin. And perhaps the end is the same sacrifice again laden with guilt. Unless someone decides to act as a Church would truly act under the premises of the beloved Jesus Christ.

Christ crucified again
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