Βίος και πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά
Nikos Kazantzakis, 1946
★ 4.02 from 62.2k ratings on Goodreads
A bookish man and a wild workman try to run a Cretan mine; one of them knows how to live. The pages move with a loose, sunlit energy, mixing wild humor, aphoristic talk and sudden lyrical stretches.
Feels like wonder, hope and unease. About freedom, madness and morality.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy fiction about friendship, freedom and men arguing over how to live, told with warmth and a philosophical bent. Be warned that some attitudes, especially toward women, read as dated and misogynistic, and the talk can slide into lecturing.
Why read it
It offers a vivid argument for embracing experience over caution, and the almond-tree exchange stays with you as a question about how to meet death while still planting.
A page from the book
Two ways to live with death, argued over a newly planted almond tree.
Look, one day I had gone to a little village. An old grandfather of ninety was busy planting an almond tree. ‘What, grandfather!’ I exclaimed. ‘Planting an almond tree?’ And he, bent as he was, turned around and said: ‘My son, I carry on as if I should never die.’ I replied: ‘And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute.’Which of us was right, boss? What readers say
Readers describe the book as life-affirming and liberating, praising its call to embrace freedom, dance, and lived experience. Others are sharply put off by its dated, misogynistic attitudes and philosophical lecturing.
Nikos Kazantzakis.Kazantzakis met the real George Zorbas in 1915; they ran a lignite mine in the Mani, and the novel grew from that friendship.
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Αναφορά στον Γκρέκο
Νίκος Καζαντζάκης, 1961
A restless spiritual autobiography about the struggles, loyalties and ideas that shape a life—and the artist's effort to give them form.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Βίος και πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy fiction about friendship, freedom and men arguing over how to live, told with warmth and a philosophical bent. Be warned that some attitudes, especially toward women, read as dated and misogynistic, and the talk can slide into lecturing.
- What is Βίος και πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά like?
- The pages move with a loose, sunlit energy, mixing wild humor, aphoristic talk and sudden lyrical stretches. Feels like wonder, hope and unease. About freedom, madness and morality.
- What should I read after Βίος και πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά?
- If you liked Βίος και πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά, try The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho), The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky) and Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Richard Bach).
A taste of the feed
The nothing-to-lose freedom of being robbed in a foreign country.
He looked around at the empty plaza again, feeling less desperate than before. This wasn’t a strange place; it was a new one…he had already traveled farther than any shepherd he knew. Oh, if they only knew how different things are just two hours by ship from where they are, he thought….As he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure. “I’m an adventurer, looking for treasure,” he said to himself.
The Alchemist · Paulo Coelho
The night sky as a door that suddenly opens in you.
He did not stop on the steps either, but went quickly down; his soul, overflowing with rapture, yearned for freedom, space, openness. The vault of heaven, full of soft, shining stars, stretched vast and fathomless above him. The Milky Way ran in two pale streams from the zenith to the horizon. The fresh, motionless, still night enfolded the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the cathedral gleamed out against the sapphire sky. The gorgeous autumn flowers, in the beds round the house, were slumbering till morning. The silence of earth seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens. The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of the stars.
The Brothers Karamazov · Fyodor Dostoevsky
The fastest thing in the sky turns out not to be a number.
You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull · Richard Bach
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