My favourite novelists are those whose characters went on some wild goose chases, looking for oases in the mirage of life. Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, and Dostoevsky have remained on the top of my list for long. Jose Saramago’s The Gospel according to Jesus Christ and Javier Marias’s Infatuations captured my fancy later. But one writer who has remained above them all for long is Nikos Kazantzakis. His novels explore the conflict between the body and the soul, between “god and man” as he put it. The Last Temptation of Christ, Christ Recrucified , and Saint Francis explore that conflict brilliantly. However, the author’s earlier novel, Zorba the Greek , is what strikes me as the best. Kazantzakis Zorba presents the classical Greek dichotomy between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Apollo is the god of reason and control, while Dionysius revels in the wild passions. In the novel, Zorba is a worker who is taken on as an assistant by the narrator who is a young intel
Cerebrate and Celebrate