In the spring of 1947, with a Greece torn apart by the Civil War, Nikos Kazantzakis submits a joint nomination with Angelos Sikelianos for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His candidature consolidates the conservative establishment of the time, who regard the Cretan author as one of their greatest enemies. All means, fair and unfair, are conscripted against his receiving the award. On the other side, Kazantzakis has tried for ten years to achieve the award, against all odds.

Personal accounts, letters, articles, excerpts from books and documents compose a colourful puzzle, which might comprise an imaginative novel but is nothing more that the historical truth.

The book brings us into contact with figures such as Palamas, Kavafis, Seferis, Elytis and Ritsos as well as famous nobelists such as Hesse, Gide, Eliot, Hemingway and Camus. Above all, however, we become witnesses to the odyssey of the intellectual and cultural world of Greece in the 20th century, which got through the Clashing Rocks of opposing opinions and shaped today’s conditions.

Kastaniotis 2015, 560 pages