The Selected Letters of Nikos Kazantzakis

Nikos Kazantzakis, Peter Bien

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780691203171, 9780691147024
• eBook ISBN: 9781400840120
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

The life of Nikos Kazantzakis—the author of Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ—was as colorful and eventful as his fiction. And nowhere is his life revealed more fully or surprisingly than in his letters. Edited and translated by Kazantzakis scholar Peter Bien, this is the most comprehensive selection of Kazantzakis's letters in any language.

One of the most important Greek writers of the twentieth century, Kazantzakis (1883–1957) participated in or witnessed some of the most extraordinary events of his times, including both world wars and the Spanish and Greek civil wars. As a foreign correspondent, an official in several Greek governments, and a political and artistic exile, he led a relentlessly nomadic existence, living in France, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Soviet Union, and England. He visited the Versailles Peace Conference, attended the tenth-anniversary celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution, interviewed Mussolini and Franco, and briefly served as a Greek cabinet minister—all the while producing a stream of novels, poems, plays, travel writing, autobiography, and translations. The letters collected here touch on almost every aspect of Kazantzakis's rich and tumultuous life, and show the genius of a man who was deeply attuned to the artistic, intellectual, and political events of his times.

Table of contents

• Cover
• The Selected Letters of NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chronology
• THE LETTERS
• I • AT LAW SCHOOL IN ATHENS
• II • PURSUING GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARIS
• III • POLITICALLY ACTIVE IN GREECE
• IV • FLEEING GREECE; RESIDENT IN AUSTRIA, GERMANY, ITALY
• V • MEETS ELENI SAMIOU; BEGINS ODYSSEY; DIVORCES GALATEA; TRAVELS TO SOVIET UNION
• VI • RESIDENT ALMOST EIGHTEEN MONTHS IN THE SOVIET UNION
• VII • TRYING TO MAKE A CAREER OUTSIDE OF GREECE, ESPECIALLY IN SPAIN
• VIII • BACK IN GREECE, HAVING FAILED ELSEWHERE; TRAVELING IN FAR EAST; ODYSSEY COMPLETED AND PUBLISHED; VISIT TO ENGLAND
• IX • CONFINED TO AEGINA DURING THE GERMAN OCCUPATION; WRITES ZORBA AND MANY PLAYS; BEGINS TO TRANSLATE HOMER’S ILIAD
• X • IN ATHENS DURING ROUND TWO OF THE CIVIL WAR; RESOLVES TO HELP LIBERATED GREECE VIA POLITICAL ACTION; BRIEFLY A CABINET MINISTER; MARRIES ELENI SAMIOU
• XI • FINAL EXILE: RESIDES BRIEFLY IN ENGLAND, THEN IN FRANCE; WRITES FINAL NOVELS AND PLAYS; TRAVELS TO CHINA
• References Cited
• Index