Information about the real person Alexis Zorba. Whether he really existed and what was his relationship with the author Kazantzakis.
Alexis Zorba, whose real name was Georgios, was born around 1867 in Kolindros. He was the son of Fotis Zorbas, a wealthy landowner and had three siblings (Katerina, Yiannis, and Xenofontas). He spent his childhood in Kolindros, but an adventure of his father with a Turk forced them to leave and settle in the refuge of Pieria. From here, his tumultuous and mysterious life began.
When he became an adult, he left for Halkidiki, where he lived the most critical years of his life in Paleochori. There, he stayed with a friend of his and worked as a lumberjack, blacksmith, mule driver, miner in a French mining company in Isvoro in the Madem Lakkos area (Stratoniki). He met the head miner of the mine, Yiannis Kalkounis, “stole” and married his daughter Eleni in Paleochori, and had twelve children with her (seven of whom ultimately survived), of whom he particularly loved his second daughter Androniki, but wars and the death of his wife Eleni brought misery to his family. After all of this, he left Paleochori and Halkidiki and came to Eleutherohori in Pieria, where his brother Giannis Zorbas, the doctor, lived.
In 1915, he left for Mount Athos with the decision to become a monk. There he met Kazantzakis and a strong friendship began to form between the two men. They then went to Mani, where they worked in the mines of Prastova (near Stoupa in Messinia, a coastal village of the Municipality of Leuktra in Messinian Mani).
His eventful life came to an end in Skopje, where he settled with his daughter Katerina. There he remarried and had more children, working in the mines, as always. Zorba died in 1941 from natural causes and the hardships of World War II. His grave is located in the Butel cemetery in Skopje. His great-grandson is Pavlos Sidiropoulos.