Peter Bien focuses on Kazantzakis' obsession with the demotic, the language "on the lips of the people," showing how it governed his writing, his ambition, and his involvement in Greek politics and educational reform. Kazantzakis' obsession worked against him in his Odyssey and found its natural vehicle only in his translation of Homer's Iliad and his novels, Zorba the Greek, The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Greek Passion.

Originally published in 1972.

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