Allegorical novel in which the cast of a Passion Play in a Greek-inhabited Turkish town find themselves paralleling the ancient Christian story.

Like his The Last Temptation of Christ, literary master Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Greek Passion is a daring exploration of the pitfalls of a religion as it is practiced by its all-too-human followers. The tiny Greek village of Lycovrisi is planning its annual Passion play when its customary tranquility is ruptured by the arrival of a group of starved refugees from a village destroyed by the Turks. The refugees, led by a righteous priest named Father Fotis, beg for assistance from the villagers of Lycovrisi, but are turned away by the domineering village elders, who each have their particular reasons for refusing to help. As tensions grow among the villagers of Lycovrisi, their elders, and the outsiders, each person in turn will be forced to reckon with his sins and seek his own path to salvation.