prolog
uk
Waves of Conquest
British coast
London
Cities covered in soot
God of England
human testament
shrine
Arise, John Bull!
That day, that historic day
Shakespeare
freedom
Epilogue

Translator's Note
Nikos Kazantzakis Chronology

The first Korean-language edition of the complete works of Nikos Kazantzakis, 30 volumes, commemorating the 50th anniversary of his death.
Open Books published all 30 volumes of Nikos Kazantzakis's complete works on March 30, 2008.
The volume published this time is significant in that it contains all of his literary works, with a massive volume of approximately 50,000 manuscript pages.
Since the first Korean translation of Zorba the Greek by Park Seok-gi and Lee In-woong in 1974, some of the works have been read through translations by Ahn Jung-hyo, Lee Yun-gi, and others, but they have gone out of print and are no longer available.
Published by Open Books to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kazantzakis's death, it is a true complete collection in that it encompasses all of his literature, from the very familiar 『Zorba the Greek』 to his debut work 『Snakes and Lilies』, his early works such as 『The God-Seeker』 which became the ideological foundation of Kazantzakis's literature, to his later masterpieces such as 『The Last Temptation』 which show his mature literary career, to the epic poem 『Odyssey』 which is called the greatest modern Greek poem, to plays and travelogues.


Why Nikos Kazantzakis?
Camus, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, lamented that Kazantzakis should have received the prize a hundred times more than he did, and that he had lost a truly great artist through his death.

Schweitzer said that the only person who deeply impressed him was Kazantzakis.

Colin Wilson said it was a tragedy that Kazantzakis was Greek.
If his name had been Kazantzovsky and he had written in Russian, he would have been on par with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
John Steinbeck named Kazantzakis one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

Martin du Gard, who read Kazantzakis in one sitting, said that he fell in love with him because of something human and disturbing about him.
Kazantzakis, a writer who lived through the turbulent 20th century, including World War II, the Soviet Revolution and the spread of communist ideology, and the Spanish Civil War.
Rather than having a biased perspective, he embodied a new human image suited to the new era through the pursuit of spiritual freedom that compromises and fuses the conflicting elements of God and humanity, mind and body, and life and death.


The Literature and Life of Nikos Kazantzakis, a Life of Struggle for Freedom and Spiritual Salvation
Kazantzakis's world of works and artistic achievements are astonishing, but the diversity of the life he lived and the spiritual realm he reached through it are even more astonishing.
He was an intellectual who wrote essays on Nietzsche, Bergson, and Russian literature, was absorbed in Buddhism, and translated Homer, Dante, and Goethe into modern Greek.
But on the other hand, he knew and loved the uneducated and the ordinary people, and it was these ordinary people to whom he always showed the deepest affection.
He traveled much of the world, wandering from place to place, unable to put down roots due to his self-chosen nomadic lifestyle.
But his true spiritual home has always been Crete, where he was born, and it was there that Kazantzakis first became acquainted with the stories of his novels: the peasants, fishermen, tavern-keepers, and country showmen.
The young Kazantzakis, who had fled to the island of Naxos, first encountered Western thought while learning French and Italian at a school run by Franciscan monks.
These childhood experiences played a significant role in Kazantzakis' tireless search for his true father, his true savior, and the meaning of his and our existence, always torn between his desire for action and his ascetic consciousness of seclusion.
On Mount Athos, a place with many ancient monasteries and famous for rejecting not only women but also all females, including cows and hens, the young Kazantzakis spent six months practicing spiritual and physical disciplines in an attempt to make direct contact with the Savior, but without success.
He briefly tried to renew his ties with Nietzsche, then fell into Buddhism, then from Buddhism to Lenin, then from Lenin to Odysseus, and finally returned to Christ.
Because all the processes of the past have borne abundant fruit in Christ.
Thus, faced with the temptation of a fierce revolution in the name of freedom, and driven by a desire for a life of action, he left behind the immortal work Zorba the Greek, which deals with the conflict between action and contemplation as its main theme.

Thus, at the age of fifty, he devoted all his energies to what he regarded as his sole duty: to become, like Joyce, a priest of the imagination, to create the uncreated consciousness of his people.
He retained the simplicity and emotional expressiveness of the East in his inner world, while also incorporating sophisticated Western thought.
This is how the epic poem "Odyssey" was born.
Soon after, World War II broke out, and with the subsequent Greek Civil War, Kazantzakis decided to live in exile because of the political and religious situation in Greece.
After settling in France, he devoted all his energy to creation.
The works completed at this time are 『Passion』, 『The Last Temptation』, and 『Saint Francis』.
By the age of 70, he was known throughout Europe, his novels had been translated into 30 languages, and in 1952 he missed out on the Nobel Prize for Literature by one vote.
Like Odysseus, Kazantzakis was a true free spirit of his time, possessing an unwavering passion for experiencing the world.


Dostoevsky, E.
M. Foster, another project following the Freud Complete Works!
Open Books, a leading literary publishing brand that has been introducing world literary gems to Korea since it began introducing Russian literature in 1986, has once again presented a literary collection that is a gift to Korean readers: the complete works of Nikos Kazantzakis.
This collection is a project that has been the culmination of nine years of hard work by translators and editors since its inception in 2000.

First, we had to decide whether to translate the original Greek text or to translate the English version.
There was also the practical problem of a thin layer of Greek translators in Korea, but I was encouraged by the fact that many of the English versions of the works had been translated by Kazantzakis experts whose accuracy and reliability were recognized, which allowed me to choose a translator for the English version (Kimon Fryer, who translated the Odyssey and The God-Seeker, worked with Kazantzakis for six months, and A.
Den Dullart, Theodora Vasils, and Peter Bean are also renowned translators specializing in Kazantzakis.
At the end of the book, their commentary is included to help you get one step closer to Kazantzakis' profound literary world.

Next, I compiled a list of the works that were in the field and collected the books that were scattered here and there in individual volumes.
This anthology covers the entirety of Kazantzakis's literature, excluding a few short plays that have not been translated into English. In addition, it includes "Letters of Kazantzakis," a collection of letters received by Kazantzakis's wife, Eleni Kazantzakis, from her husband, allowing readers to examine Kazantzakis both as a writer and as a person.

Lastly, when selecting a translator, we sought ways to convey the value of the original work as much as possible.
Despite their reputation for excellent translations, six manuscripts by translators Lee Yun-gi and Ahn Jeong-hyo, all of which were out of print and never saw the light of day except for Zorba the Greek, were re-examined and reborn anew, and the remaining 15 works were also reborn as works that simultaneously bring to life Kazantzakis's spirit and the flavor of the Korean language through the hands of Korea's top translators.
After five years of meticulous comparison with the original text, proofreading, and discussions between translators and editors, these manuscripts were finally published to the world.