A novel narrated by a bookish young Greek writer who travels to Crete to reopen an old mine. There he meets Alexis Zorba, an older, earthy workman who sings, dances, cooks and talks about life with startling energy. The two form an unlikely partnership and friendship. The narrator, who has lived mostly through books, slowly learns from Zorba's appetite for experience and his refusal to be crushed by misfortune. Set among village life, work and weather, the book is funny, tender and philosophical. It remains a loved portrait of joy and freedom, and a meditation on how to live fully.
Quotes
To cleave that sea in the gentle autumnal season, murmuring the name of each islet, is to my mind the joy most apt to transport the heart of man into paradise.
What kind of a man are you? Don't you even like dolphins!?
The maimed don't get into Paradise.
You turn the wheel and the mud whirls round, as if you were possessed while you stand over it and say "I'm going to make a jug, I'm going to make a plate, I'm going to make a lamp and the devil knows what more!" That's what you might call being a man: freedom!