Timeless novels gain their distinction by dealing with timeless themes. So it is that Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis, recently made the Guardian Unlimited’s list of ‘Top 100 Books of all Time.’

Of course, it takes more than just the inclusion of a few universal ideas to propel a work of fiction successfully through the ages. The themes need to be adorned with appealing plots and characters. And since Kazantzakis’ novel lacks the former, it is the latter which has undoubtedly endeared the book to millions of readers throughout the six decades since its publication.

Alexis Zorba, the eponymous 65-year-old character, is an unschooled laborer, a cook, musicician, veteran of the Balkan Wars, world-traveler, womanizer, inventor, and an authentic, emotionally sincere man for all ages with the heart of a teenager. One could argue that he embodies the traits of many of literature’s most memorable figures—Don Quixote’s eccentricity, Odysseus’ masculine audacity, Madame Bovary’s restlessness, Mersault’s grounding in the physical and rage at the universe’s indifference toward man.

We meet Zorba on a cold, rainy day when he walks into a café at the Piraeus port and introduces himself to the story’s protagonist, whom we know only as ‘Boss,’ a thirty-five-year-old Greek intellectual. Boss is on his way to Crete where he plans to re-open a disused coal-mine and get in touch with the real world, away from his Apollonian tendencies so he can stop “chewing paper and covering (himself) with ink.” Zorba accompanies Boss on his venture and the two men begin a dance of the minds in which their philosophies on life come up against one another in sharp contrast.

The novel, however, is not a battle of wits or personalities. It is a warm, sometimes dark, portrait of two contrasting approaches to life—the free-spirited vs. the introspective. Boss, an adherent to the latter, views Zorba with a mixture of awe and admiration. Zorba views Boss as a stifled bookworm who has lost his ability to enjoy life because of his over-analysis of it. It is an idea with which every intellectual has struggled. Indeed, Zorba is the kind of man that most men wish they could be—a bold, experienced, confident, charming philanderer forged from the blood, sweat and tears of his many adventures. He is, however, the man that few men will ever be.

Conversely, Zorba is every Puritan’s worst nightmare—an anti-clerical, borderline existentialist whose lust for life could easily be interpreted as hedonism. His worship of women, not as individuals but as a species, has been viewed by some as a form of misogyny or chauvinism. But, personal morale aside, many of the ideals that Zorba represents are cultural idiosyncrasies. In patriarchal Greek society, where the men have rarely ever had trouble reconciling their piety with their promiscuity, one might say that Zorba is a Greek version of Nietzsche’s superman.

What stands out in the novel is the author’s tremendous job of characterizing Zorba while writing in first-person from the perspective of Boss. We see only what Boss sees and become acquainted with Zorba through dialogue and Boss’ musings. And it is in the dialogue where much of Zorba’s life-affirming, seize-the-day attitude is revealed:

“To live—Do you know what that means? To undo your belt and look for trouble!”

But, more than anything, it is the underlying theme of death and Zorba’s constant awareness of it that is at the philosophical core of the novel. Zorba does not welcome God into his life and fall into a geriatric lull of acceptance. He grows more restless and wild with age, angrier at the callousness of the universe, and more determined to live life to the fullest and enjoy every moment simply because he is alive. He works the mine wholeheartedly, seduces a former cabaret-singer, fights young village men, and proudly announces to Boss, “I think I must have five or six demons inside me!”

Zorba is not a thinker. “Boss,” he says, “everything’s simple in this world. How many times must I tell you? So don’t go and complicate things!” He has no use for philosophy or asceticism since it can’t solve the only mystery that really matters, death. “All those damned books you read—what good are they? Why do you read them? If they don’t tell you that, what do they tell you?”

Kazantzakis spent his entire career wrestling with religion, persistently haunted by questions of life and death. He has long since passed into the eternity that he tried so hard to understand, but Zorba lives on in the hearts of millions as a stirring, larger-than-life figure. And in that sense, Kazantzakis just may have found a loop-hole in the great mystery of mortality.