Andreas Nenedakis was the son of an unruly, mountaineering shepherd, became a merchant in a small town, was sentenced to death during World War II, and after its conclusion was subjected to torture; as a patriot, communist, and writer who adopted in his literary work the voice of a tormented student, he embodies the two extremes of a paradoxical contradiction.

The leading anthropologist –and now Greek citizen– Michael Herzfeld first met Nenedakis during his field research in Crete, and the deep friendship that developed between them gradually led to this study. The anthropologist places the adventures, passions, and perspectives of the writer in their historical context, exploring the relationship that connects conservatism with rebellion in Greek culture.

Interweaving ethnographic analysis with Nenedakis's visions, he shows us how an insightful commentator with deep self-awareness and an uncompromising personal perspective can creatively complicate what we know about local and national culture. By overturning the conventions of contemporary anthropological literature, Herzfeld insists that we can read the novelistic biography of a Greek through the lens of lived reality.

The same question is posed by the hero of one of Nenedakis's works: "Wasn't his life and the life of all of us, from that time, a novel?"