A scholar only dedicated to philosophically questioning life, the narrator is disturbed when his good friend goes off to fight for his countrymen while calling him a bookworm, so he decides to move to Crete and play the capitalist to demonstrate to himself and his good friend that he can be more than a pure scholar. On his way there he meets Zorba, a man full of stories and life adventures, and he hires him. The book is the story of the months they spend on Crete, trying to find their fortune by exploiting a lignite mine.
