Do you recommend Peter Bien’s translation of Kazantzakis’s “Alexis Zorba, the Greek”?

As it turns out, I have read Christ Recrucified and Freedom and Death in Greek, and the Last Temptation and Zorba only in English, in Bien’s translation.

I have not read anyone else’s translation, so I can’t answer your A2A fully. The astonishing folksy stylistics of Kazantzakis are not going to come through in English. That’s actually just as well: an attempt to make them come through would be too distracting, as it is in translating Cavafy.

But from memory, Bien’s translation rang true to the spirit of the novels I had read in Greek. I recommend it.

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