The book contains the last interview, significant and extensive, given by Nikos Kazantzakis to Pierre Sipriot in the spring of 1957, just a few months before his death. The interview was broadcast in seven episodes by the national station of French Radio and was later published by the journalist in a separate volume.

These conversations – a panorama of the Kazantzakian universe through the mapping of his spiritual and artistic coordinates – revolve around the great novels he wrote and the iconic heroes he created, a phenomenon unparalleled in modern Greek letters, with international radiance.

Here we witness an authentic approach, as the creator himself dissects his creation. It is the only time that Nikos Kazantzakis comments on such a breadth and with such depth on his influences, ideas, and literature. Beyond that, he also speaks about what he loved most in his life: Crete, the land of his ancestors, which has fought for centuries with indomitable heroism for its freedom, about Greece and its modern fate, about the demotic language, the "living language of the people," and about the "beautiful and eternal" nature.

A true novelist can only live in the reality of his time and, while living this reality, realizes his responsibility. He therefore tries to help his peers face and solve, as much as possible, the agonizing problems of his era. Although literary work today reflects our times, it is necessarily one of the subtlest and most effective forms of action. Or, better yet, it can become the seed of action.

The novelist, while realizing his mission, strives to push reality to take the shape he deems more worthy for humanity. In other times, more stable, more certain of themselves, beauty could be enough to satisfy the ideal of the writer. Today, a writer, if he is truly active, is a person who suffers and worries upon seeing reality. He is led to collaborate with all the forces of light that still survive and to contribute so that the heavy destiny of man progresses a little. If today the writer remains faithful to his mission, he is a fighter.

Nikos Kazantzakis

I cannot, in just a few lines, sketch the portrait of this man who wished to adapt the rhythm of his life to that of creation, to encompass the centuries in order to follow the footsteps of humanity, and who, in an apparently diverse work, yet with a unified sensitivity, worked conscientiously to give meaning and form to the passions of people throughout vast times and spaces.

Pierre Sipriot

The seven conversations of Pierre Sipriot (1921-1998) with Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) form Part A of the book. Part B includes two articles by the French journalist: "Nikos Kazantzakis in 1953" and "The Uncompromising, a book by Eleni Kazantzakis." Following are a selection from Sipriot of seventeen fundamental maxims of the author, his chronology, as well as notes from the translator.