Being born in a portion of the world that felt the hand of an outside government as a source of overarching power, one might figure that this specific fact would have an overbearing influence upon a writer’s craft. That, however, wasn’t the case with Nikos Kazantzakis’ Zorba the Greek. Instead drawing influence from his own travels in addition to his wide and ever shifting political and philosophical ideology, Kazantzakis fused the two with a bit of travelogue to create one of most famous pieces of fiction from the first half of the 20^th century.

Zorba the Greek and its main characters were ostensibly used to espouse and refute an existential point of view, which the author had initially broached in his 1909 play Comedy. The ideas that this Crete born author played with may not have directly influenced later continental writers like Sarte and Camus, but each must have been acutely aware of Kazantzakis – the later commenting after he had beaten the elder writer out for the Nobel Prize in Literature that Kazantzakis deserved the recognition "a hundred times more." Whether or not that’s the case is a moot point, but the way in which the two authors perceived life, at times in their writing, at least, bore a distinct similarity.

In his 1946 novel – which wasn’t translated into English until the following decade – Kazantzakis used the disparate social and economical stratum of life to proffer some sort of critique on the futility of life. Zorba and his eventual boss, who meet at a café in Piraeus, find each other’s company to be compelling enough to strike up a business deal. With the younger man’s financial stability, the elder Zorba finds another source of income, while at the same time giving his overly intellectual companion a perspective on life that he isn’t able to come across while scribbling down some obtuse narrative on the Buddah.

As the two, and their underlings – Zorba’s given the position of foreman, or the rough equivalent – make their way to Crete, stories of woman and over indulgent living entertain the younger man while simultaneously confusing him and the writings that he’s currently enmeshed in. The contrast between Zorba and the Buddah seems an odd one at first, but the Buddah isn’t necessarily meant to represent the actually figure – or supposed personage – so much as a specific way of living. And it becomes plainly apparent that the boss man is as interested in Zorba for academic pursuits as much as his ability to command respect from the work men who are under his tutelage while mining ore in the mountain side.

The physicality of the men isn’t played up as much as it possible could be in order to more definitely separate the flesh from the mind – although Zorba’s female conquest, at one point, offers up an inviting flank to the younger man.

At times, the writing and point of view Kazantzakis aims at revealing through Zorba is relayed to readers in a manner more befitting of the boss, but in that it’s not charmless.