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Rating: 
Summary: No hope No despair
Review: A long, long time ago, I read this book and it changed the way I read literature. Kazantzakis' book goes beyond writing - it is a vivid exploration of the flame that consumes man. To go back to reading the frivolous so-called literature of today almost seems pointless. I am just thankful that Kazantzakis left us with such a rich body of work to read. The libraries were full of his books twenty years ago, but today I rarely find them on any shelf. To those of us who were lucky enough to discover him early, we know that he is the best kept secret of the twentieth century.
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Summary: For Kazantzakis fans only
Review: First of all, good luck trying to find a copy. Second of all, you have to be a Kazantzakis fan to get through this book. Read Last Temptation or Zorba first, fall in love with his work, then read this. Third, I don't know if this book will appeal to women because it is extremely masculine. That said, it is written with a scriptural density, beautiful even in translation. If you hate Victorian novels, you've found your nirvana.
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Summary: A place to stand and breathe when all else fails...
Review: I have two copies of this book, both well worn. I began reading it over twentyfive years ago. As others have noted, the text is so rich that one or two pages is enough, and twenty is too much to digest. I find I tend to pick it up when I am discouraged. It is always a sweet wind to stand in, inducing a sense of space, of freedom in the cosmos, that lifts me to a higher perspective. And yes the translation is stunning. It is hard to remember that it was not written in English first. I have not finished the book - I just finished book 16, of 24, recently - and I don't know what I will do for solace, and reminders of my true free nature, when I have finished it. I suppose I could read it again. I have seen nothing else like it, and have never met anyone else who is reading it. So my experience of solitude is extreme when I read it. I should note also that it seems to have a particularly male point of view. There is also a feminist in me that would like to see that perspective broadened. Yet it offers so much that is true, I have to forgive this.
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Summary: Mithras and Apollo
Review: I read Kazantzakis absorbing and compelling verse novel over a two-month period, rich and crazy as a Christmas fruit cake, and only to be nibbled in small doses. This is a deeply flawed work of consumate art; flawed, because it expresses a weltangshaung and philosophical stance utterly at odds with the complexities and values of the human spirit which it still succeeds in celebrating in verse of passion, intensity and beauty. Flawed, because it defines the human spirit in terms of the unsubtle, extroverted, violence of masculinity at its most obnoxious, a Nietzschean ubermensch driven to sweep through the human mind like a panzer division; flawed because it present a vision of utter and self-serving solipsism.But of consumate art in that within those paramaters it creates, with a richness and intensity rarely encountered in modern literature, a detailed, elaborate and sensory world of image, passion and experience; and in positioning the human spirit dancing at the edge of the abyss, in celebrating the defining moments and relationships of life, it ultimately triumphs over its own weakness. Its stages of the soul's evolution, its imagery and its passionate invocation of the sun link it with the old warrior-cult of Mithras; and while the leopards, elephants, drunkards and maenads seem at first more of Dionysos, the elegance and elegaic elements also link the work with the Greek Apollo, and the discipline of an exact and exacting verse. Essential to an understanding of the twentieth century vision - and also to an understanding of what made so many of us passionately feminist.
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Summary: Mithras and Apollo
Review: I read Kazantzakis absorbing and compelling verse novel over a two-month period, rich and crazy as a Christmas fruit cake, and only to be nibbled in small doses. This is a deeply flawed work of consumate art; flawed, because it expresses a weltangshaung and philosophical stance utterly at odds with the complexities and values of the human spirit which it still succeeds in celebrating in verse of passion, intensity and beauty. Flawed, because it defines the human spirit in terms of the unsubtle, extroverted, violence of masculinity at its most obnoxious, a Nietzschean ubermensch driven to sweep through the human mind like a panzer division; flawed because it present a vision of utter and self-serving solipsism. But of consumate art in that within those paramaters it creates, with a richness and intensity rarely encountered in modern literature, a detailed, elaborate and sensory world of image, passion and experience; and in positioning the human spirit dancing at the edge of the abyss, in celebrating the defining moments and relationships of life, it ultimately triumphs over its own weakness. Its stages of the soul's evolution, its imagery and its passionate invocation of the sun link it with the old warrior-cult of Mithras; and while the leopards, elephants, drunkards and maenads seem at first more of Dionysos, the elegance and elegaic elements also link the work with the Greek Apollo, and the discipline of an exact and exacting verse. Essential to an understanding of the twentieth century vision - and also to an understanding of what made so many of us passionately feminist.
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Summary: Kazantzakis's "Odyssey": Literature or Baklava?
Review: This epic poem, much longer than Homer's original, was, for me, a very long read. Not because it's difficult, per se, but because Kazantzakis's language drips with honey--like baklava. I cannot read more than ten pages at a time because the writing (even in translation) is so incredibly rich...Kazantzakis describes the crescent moon as an ivory comb drawn through night's black hair. The reader needs time, again and again, to put the poem aside, to absorb and revel in what one has just read (and after four readings, the above remains as true as it did during the first reading). The "Odyssey" is sensual, passionate, hallucinatory and immensely/intensely spiritual, Kazantzakis's Odysseus so compelling that one is not startled when Death himself, while stalking Odysseus, falls asleep and dreams of being alive...dreams of being Odysseus. "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "Zorba the Greek" notwithstanding, "The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel" is not only Kazantzakis's best work, it rivals the best of Joyce, Hemingway, Pynchon, and Cary; only Durrell's "Alexandria Quartet" is as rich in language and as lovingly written, but Durrell's masterpiece is fiction, of course, not poetry. Only Homer himself has composed a work so valid and so vivid--not only for his own time, but for all time to come.
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Summary: No hope No despair
Review: This is the best book I have ever read. Granted, I have read it in greek but still, there is no match. Homer would have loved his hero over again.
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Summary: Homer would have loved it
Review: This is the best book I have ever read. Granted, I have read it in greek but still, there is no match. Homer would have loved his hero over again.
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