The Greek civil war provides the subject for The Fratricides (1963) by Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957), well known outside of Greece for novels such as Zorba the Greek (1946) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1955), and for his epic poem, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938). The fratricidal fury of the civil war provides a gruesome laboratory in which the claims of a beneficent, all-powerful divinity are tested. Set during Holy Week, the novel begins with the civil war well under way. Three times the Reds (members of ELAS) have captured the village Castello; three times the Blacks (supporters of EDES and the government) have recaptured it. Father Yanaros, the village priest, is appalled by the spectacle of brother against brother, both literally and figuratively. He is momentarily attracted by the notion that Lenin is the new Christ, come to right the many wrongs of the contemporary world, to redeem the poor and the oppressed, and that "this unjust world would crumble by the hand of God." But he inevitably concludes, "earthly paradise is the work of the devil." The contending forces are crucifying Greece. In protest against the incessant slaughter, he decides he will not resurrect Christ this Easter season. In Kazantzakis's work, and perhaps in the villages of Greece as well, Easter Mass is not so much a celebration of the Resurrection as a yearly reenactment of it.

Father Yanaros has decided there is no right side. Simply refusing to resurrect Christ is not enough; he must save his village. Knowing the guerrillas plan to attack Castello again soon, he goes into the mountains to meet with their leader, his own son, Captain Drakos. With some difficulty, he persuades Drakos to promise not to kill anyone if the village is handed over to him. Drakos is a fighter for freedom rather than a Communist, but looking over his shoulder at all times is his doctrinaire Communist second-in-command, Loukas. In Castello, Father Yanaros has difficulty persuading the villagers to surrender the city in exchange for promises of no reprisals, but with the aid of a villager's vision of the Virgin, which Father Yanaros does not see, but (with serious reservations) capitalizes upon, he persuades them.

Captain Drakos and his men descend on Castello and meet no resistance. But Drakos has already betrayed his father and threatens to execute all fighters who will not switch sides. With his enemies against the wall, Drakos hesitates, but Loukas eggs him on. The villagers are executed, and Father Yanaros, their blood on his hands, goes off, promising to preach against the Communists wherever he goes. Drakos is on the verge of letting him go, but Loukas again pushes him over the edge, and the priest is shot dead.

As is often the case in Kazantzakis's work, the novel focuses on a man's attempt to engage God, to struggle with Him, even to give Him meaning. But The Fratricides encounters the heart of the historical moment as well. There is a real sense of the need for revolution, for social justice, and therefore sympathy for the guerrillas, but the character of Loukas dramatizes the pernicious effect of dogmatic communism controlled by Stalin. The only character in the novel for whom Kazantzakis shows no sympathy whatsoever, Loukas embodies the excesses that deprived the left of the broader popular support it needed to prevail.

Stratis Tsirkas's (1911-80) trilogy, Drifting Cities (The Club, 1960; Ariadne, 1962; The Bat, 1965), presents another aspect of the civil war, from a decidedly different political perspective. This intricately designed novel, marked by a variety of points of view and narrative modes, has at its center the fight for the soul of the Greek army that, along with the government, has regrouped in Egypt after the German victory. The "Drifting Cities," where the books are respectively set, are Jerusalem, Cairo, and Alexandria. The hero, Manos Simonidis (also known as Kaloyannis), an intellectual in the Communist Party and a Greek army officer, is caught in the labyrinthine cities and in an equally convoluted series of events. Each book of the trilogy is presided over by its own Ariadne (the daughter of Minos and the woman who helped Theseus find his way out of the labyrinth): Emmy, the promiscuous aristocrat whose desire for Minos is never consummated; Ariagne (whose name represents the way the name Ariadne is pronounced on Naxos), the maternal figure protecting her real and figurative children from the Minotaurs of war and intrigue; and Nancy, the upperclass Englishwoman with socialist leanings.

After deserting from army units controlled by right-wing political forces, Manos labors to rejoin the First Greek Brigade fighting with the Allies at El Alamein in October 1942. Ironically, he succeeds in reaching the Greek army in Egypt only when their adversaries are the British, who in the spring of 1943 treat the mutinous Greek anti-Royalists more harshly than they do their Nazi prisoners.

All the while, he struggles with the Communist Party hierarchy, whose orders, which rarely fit the circumstances, seem to be generated by motives, personal or political, not open to scrutiny. But with all of Manos's frustration with Communists, they have their redeeming points, and all--or almost all--believe they are working toward a better world. The true villains are the Greek right, the British and Americans attempting to ensure the continuance of the monarchy after the war, and those who allow themselves to be manipulated by these reactionary forces. In the trilogy's climax, after the leftists have purged right-wing officers, British forces surround the Greek brigades and disperse some and send others on a death march across the desert, and the ships that have mutinied are surrounded by the British and loyalist Greek navy and disarmed.

Tsirkas, a Marxist literary critic whose biases are quite clear, nonetheless offers an accurate representation of the extent to which fears of the left undercut the war against fascism.

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