Captain Michalis
Cover of the second edition in Greek, Athens 1955
|
|
| Author | Nikos Kazantzakis |
|---|---|
| Original title | Ο Καπετάν Μιχάλης |
| Translator | Jonathan Griffin |
| Country | Greece |
| Language | Greek |
| Publisher | Bruno Cassirer, Oxford |
|
Publication date
|
1953 |
|
Published in English
|
1956 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 472 (Paperback) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 423492 |
Captain Michalis (Greek: Ο Καπετάν Μιχάλης) is a 1953 novel by the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis. It is known as Freedom and Death in the United Kingdom. The writer was influenced by his early years on the island of Crete and uses explicit Cretan Greek words and the Cretan idiom in a way that preserves it untouched. It is one of the most widely read books of modern Greek literature which has been translated and published in several languages.
The book deals with the rebellion of the Cretans against the Ottoman Empire in the year 1889.
It is thought that the book's title honours Kazantzakis' father Michalis Kazantzakis, by whom the writer was inspired. The word Captain is not used in its naval rank sense, but as the title of leader of guerilla group (the writer's father Michalis Kazantzakis was a leader of such a group, hence the title. Kazantzakis says this in his book "Report to Greco").
Freedom or Death was added as a subtitle to the second edition in Greek released by Difros publishers in Athens in 1955 and was the preferred English (US) title. In the UK the book was published as Freedom and Death, which were the last words in the book. The expression comes from the Greek national motto "Freedom or Death" (Eleftheria i thanatos), derived from the Greek War of Independence and used by Cretan rebels such as the book's protagonist. The "or" was knowingly replaced with "and" in the ending text by Kazantzakis.
Captain Michalis has been translated into many languages, including Turkish.
...
Wikipedia