Zorba the Greek

Kazantzakis sets the novel on the coast of Crete, his own island, where the young narrator and the labourer Alexis Zorba reopen a lignite gallery and build a brief life by the sea. The real venture behind it happened across the water in the Messenian Mani. The map keeps both: it anchors the explicit Crete of the book at Heraklion, the author's birthplace, and marks the Peloponnesian mine that actually inspired it.

Alexis Zorba

The harbour café, Piraeus

Piraeus

The story begins on the Athenian waterfront, where the young narrator, waiting out a storm before a boat to Crete, falls into talk with a restless older workman who talks his way into the job of foreman. Their meeting by the harbour sets the whole book in motion before either has left the mainland.

Chapter 1

explicit The novel opens on the waterfront at Piraeus; this marks the passenger harbour from which boats crossed to Crete.

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