The Cretan famous one The Nikos Kazantzakis great writer was born (in 1883) and grows has Héraklion. Its childhood on its native land was filled of important experiments, which later were going to determine I' evolution of the anxious young man.
AD INTERIM 'seven years age already it lived the revolution of 1889 and ad interim 'old seventeen years, it saw its fatherland being released from I' Turkish occupation. It breathed I' air vivifying of these heroic moments for Crete, which influenced it considerably. One can realize of them several references in his works.
In 1908, after having supplemented its studies in right ad interim 'age 25 years, it took its first steps in the modern Greek literature with its works “Ia disease of the century”, “snake and Iys”, and play “IE day rises”.
Its first works revealed already the important literary course that it was going to follow thereafter, influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, of which it translates I' work Thus “spoke Zarathoustra”. In 1912-13 it took part in the wars of Balkans. During I' inter-war period, he travelled unceasingly, he writes his most important accounts of voyage and he translates the Odyssey.
After the Second world war he writes his more important Ies books, in particular “Recrucifié Christ”, “Capetan Michalis”, “last temptation”, “Alexis Zorbas” and he achieves his “Odyssey”,
In its work “Report in Greco” it expresses in an autobiographical way its sight of the world and its fundamental thoughts about the life and of spiritual creation. Its love and its admiration for Crete and the Cretan ones are obvious in most its cover. He even spoke “about the Cretan glance”, i.e. in the way in which the Cretan ones carry out their life and are expressed through their daily actions and their spiritual research,
Kazantzakis lived the last years of its life has Nice and died on on October 26th, 1957 with Freiburg in Germany, it was buried in its Cretan ground liked so much with the Martinengo bastion on the Venetian ramparts of Héraklion.
Its major novels • Alexis Zorba (1946)
• Christ recrucifié (or Greek Passion) (1948)
• Freedom or death (1950)
• Last temptation (1951)
• The Poor one of Sitted (1956)
• Letter in Greco. Memories of my life (posthumous publication in 1961)
Another translated works
• Asceticism. Salvatore Dei
• Sinai Mount in the island of Come. Notebook of voyage
• Travel China-Japan, translated by Liliane Princet and Nikos Athanassiou
• The Garden of the Rocks
He also wrote several plays played both in Greece and abroad, and translated into Greek the Divine comedy of Dante in 1932 and Faust, of Goethe in 1936.
Several films are based on its work.