Kazantzakis notes that travel and the creative process were the two greatest joys in his life. Though he often travelled as a newspaper correspondent, earning a living was never his motive – work as a correspondent allowed him to satisfy his wanderlust.

Travel itself was a process which, in showing him different places and people, led him to self-knowledge, the transcendence of egotism and the adoption of an all-embracing perspective. He went everywhere and saw everything in the countries he visited: cities, villages, the countryside, museums, important public figures and ordinary people.

His ability to tune in to the distinct, often hidden soul of a place is exquisitely recorded in the pages of his travel books, which are regarded as the epitome of Greek travel writing.