Kazantzakis first met I. T. Kakridis in the winter of 1942, in Georgios Papandreou’s office. At first he asked for bibliographic assistance in translating the Iliad, but later wrote to Kakridis proposing that they worked on the translation together.

The work was put aside for a while in the summer of 1945, when the two men came to Crete as experts to assess German atrocities. Over the years their collaboration lasted, they exchanged dozens of letters regarding problems with the translation.

Kakridis, who spent a month with Kazantzakis, first in Aegina and later in Antibes, recalls the feverish pace of their work, as well as the prodigious, laborious lexicographic research done by his collaborator.