At the Palaces of Knossos

Dear Mr. Kazantzakis, I received your novel Griechische Passion with the beautiful hand-written inscription, and have read it with sincere emotion. The novel is without doubt a work of high artistic order, formed by a tender and firm hand, and built up with strong dynamic power. I have particularly admired the poetic tact in phrasing the subtle, yet unmistakable allusions to the Christian Passion Play. They give the book its mythical background which is such a vital element in the epic form today. . . . Please accept my best wishes for the future. Most cordially yours, Thomas Mann.

(Thomas Mann, in a letter to Nikos Kazantzakis)

I held great admiration and, if you would allow me, a kind of affection for your husband's work. I have not forgotten that on the very day when I regretted receiving a distinction (of the Nobel Prize for Literature) that Kazantzakis deserved a hundred times more, I received from him the most generous of telegrams. . . . With him disappears one of our last great artists. I am among those who feel and will continue to feel the void he has left.

(Albert Camus, in a letter to Eleni Kazantzakis)

The great writer made me enter an enchanted universe where man, starlit dust, pursues with the same relentlessness his battle with himself and with God. Whoever begins to read Kazantzakis cannot stop.

(Elie Wiesel, in All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs)

As in Kazantzakis’s other work, there is a strong sense of dual heritage, particularly in the emphasis on the web of national and cultural conflicts and connections between then-mighty Crete and its vassal state Greece. He paints a dreamlike tapestry of the Cretan magnificence, power, and cruelty against which Athenian prince Theseus, with aid from Cretan princess Ariadne, must fight for freedom.

(Publishers Weekly)

[I]t is a testament to Kazantzakis’ powers that a work written casually for a young audience can make compelling reading for people of any age. . . . No modern writer is as gifted as Kazantzakis in creating characters who are bigger than life yet very human, and everyone in this story manages to draw some sympathy from the reader, even the Minotaur. . . . Whether young or old, those who read this book will not be disappointed.

(Los Angeles Times)