Christ Recrucified

Very fine. The parallels between the original events and the staging of the local passion play are shrewdly managed. I particularly liked Kazantazakis' sense of pace. This is a relatively long book, but there is no dragging and there is consistent forward motion. The "Herod" character is particularly amusing, very believable in this context.

A high quality novel. A village in the very late Ottoman empire, with a Greek population and a Turkish landlord is the scene. The roles are chosen for the annual Passion Play, but a murder occurs, and the inevitable tragedy unrolls. The opening threshing scene is still with me, half a century later.

A Greek village will put on a passion play, and they select townspeople for the various parts. Amazingly, real situations in the village put each of them in a analogous real-life role so that they are living the parts they had been chosen to play. Great idea, but I don't believe that it supports a book of this length. The characters are well-imagined.

This book is a beautiful meditation on how the true adoption of Christ-like attitudes changes a good person into a great person, and how the simple sincere gospel threatens the powerful, rich and greedy. Kazantzakis may have written his characters alittle too sharply; few characters had real, complex lives. Perhaps because those who were complex were destroyed by their own emotions, Michelis and Panayartoras. Both lost the woman they loved. One turned to destruction, trying to destroy the world. The other turned to acetism, turning his back on the world. And Manolios and the widow both found salvation in martrydom, though the "church" refused to recognize their sacrifice as salvation. The book continually asks the question why the show more "church" refuses to see Christ and insists on it's own righteousness. show less

Read years ago. I've never forgotten this moving book, though I don't remember many details. I had tears running down my face at the character Manolios, the shepherd, chosen to play Christ in the village Passion play.

The Agha, Turkish ruler of a Greek village lives with a young boy, Youssoufaki, who he found in Smyrna. The boy is murdered and the Agha finds a replacement.

Re-enactment of the Passion Play of Jesus in a small Greek village