The Greek Passion

by Nikos Kazantzakis

Book Overview

The inhabitants of a Greek village, ruled by the Turks, plan to enact the life of Christ in a mystery play but are overwhelmed by their task. A group of refugees, fleeing from the ruins of their... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• ISBN: B000J02D5Q
• Release Date: January 1965
• Publisher: Ballantine
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Discover This Profound Modern Masterpiece

A perfect novel and not to be missed. Profound, harrowing, and bursting with the fullness of the human heart-- also boisterous, merry, and bitingly satiric. And Unceasingly Entertaining. The year leading up to Easter week and the performance of the town's Passion Play finds the people of this Ottoman-occupied Greek village becoming transformed by Christ's story, as author Kazantzakis' novel encapsules the very history of the Christian Church. His is a fiercely nature-centric vision of Man's rude and clamorous confrontation with the struggle for right-ness, for rightousness in the face of smothering societal hypocrisy. Funny and sardonic, shocking and brutal, and often deeply beautiful, Christ Recrucified get's my highest recommendation.

recommended for a greek audience

The setting is a Greek villiage deep in the interior of Anatolia in the early part of the twentieth century at the twilight of the Ottoman Empire. The colorful imagary, vibrant characters, humor, lustiness, and spirituality are present in this novel just as they are in Zorba the Greek. It's a wonderful read. If you loved the Zorba novel, you will also love The Greek Passion. I don't want to tell you the theme of the novel because that would surely spoil it for you. I didn't realize Kazantzakis' message until almost the last chapter. It was not a complete surprise, but then I wasn't expecting it either. What I can say, is that every person who calls themselves Greek should read this book. It was written specifically for you, so get going and read. As for the others in this forum, this may seem odd, but I don't recommend this book for you. This novel does not have a universal theme. Unless you are Greek or very familiar with Greek history and the Greek character, you will not realize the meaning of this novel and gain full appreciation of its genius. Some may disagree, but that's all I can say without divulging too much.

Yet another saintly person suffers for everyone's sins

_The Greek Passion_ is a work of art written by a genius who undeniably knew his own people. Nikos Kazantzakis transports the story of the passion of Jesus Christ to a Greek village that is under the control of the Turks during the final years of the Ottoman Empire. This version of the passion is one of great beauty and is told with tremendous fervor and emotion. Here, a simple, innocent shepard receives blame for, then accepts personal responsibility for the sins of his neighbors so that their lives may be spared. The shepard and his followers are called bolsheviks and worse because they believe that a band of starving refugees from another village, which includes children with distended bellies, should be fed and clothed from the storehouses and the homes of some of the wealthy community elders. Two aspects of religion are shown:a hypocritical priest who is so concerned with protecting his power and authority that he panders to the enemy, a Turkish Agha, over the welfare of the Greek people; and, a saintly priest, who acts in the true spirit of Christianity by endeavoring to relieve his peoples' suffering. The forces of these two disparate priests eventually clash and the results are both tragic and heartbreaking. It is apparent that very little has changed since the time of Jesus. Special interests are still putting up road blocks to prevent the meek from inheriting the earth. _The Greek Passion_ is a novel that the admirers of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and perhaps even Jesus Christ, himself, would love.

A passion play that'll play passionate havoc on your senses

Brilliant! The only book ever that I couldn't put down after starting. I read it over 14 hours in one sitting and the only thing that eclipsed the sensations the novel instilled in me was the epic thought that I had really, truly and for the first time read a book that physically, emotionally, intellectually drew me in so much that I couldn't put it down. Unputdownable? I can't get the thing out of my head! Like all Kazantzakis' novels the characters are drawn so roundly that you begin to cheer and seethe when they make an entrance. Really fully formed people inhabit this story - and what a story it is. A passion play takes on a mind of its own when the characters in character for the play begin to lose their grip on what is real and what is imaginary. It is explosive, sad, thrilling, genuinely laugh out loud funny, desperate, tragic, joyous. A wonderful book. Clips by a hair, the great Zorba. Now someone should make a movie out of this one.....

A Book for the Whole World

I think there is no doubt that in this book the writer tells the story for the whole world not just for Greece.The story happens in a little village that is a sign of the whole world. Kazantzakis tells us a story of a cruel man who just likes to kill people.We can clearly see the scream of the author for liberity.He tells us that living like Jesus has it's own way which is fighting for truth and against the lies.I think that by reading this book we can not stay silence anymore against the lies in our world.