Kazantzakis arrived in Athens in December 1944, when the city was in the grip of the Greek Civil War. His experiences of the last months of the Occupation on Aegina had convinced him that following the liberation a painful new page in the history of Greece would be turned.

“I can already see rivers of Greek blood flowing in the streets of Athens after the liberation of the country from the Germans”, he wrote in 1943, on discerning the refusal of politicians to co-operate in ideological bridge building.

The tragic reality of the Civil War led him to become involved in politics once more, so as to achieve national unity.