Soloup's graphic novel "ZORBAS - Green stone of beauty" was presented on Thursday 26th of September in Chania, published by Dioptra Publications in the framework of the 8th Chaniartoon - International Comic & Animation Festival. The graphic novel is based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis "The Life and State of Alexis Zormpas".
The book was presented by the creator of the graphic novel, Antonis Nikolopoulos (Soloup), Marina Aretaki, member of of the Department of Philology of the University of Crete and Paraskevi Vassiliadi, PhD candidate in Modern Greek Literature at the University of Athens, Deputy Director and Curator of The Nikos Kazantzakis Museum Collections. The presentation was preceded by a "livening up" of some excerpts from the book by Antonis Athanasakis and Christos Rahiotis.
Ms. Vassiliadis' presentation highlighted the wealth of documents preserved in the Museum and related to Zorbas, the famous hero of Nikos Kazantzakis. At the same time, a "magical" encounter between the original artistic creation and the design illustration of Soloup and the real documents of Nikos Kazantzakis' life and work from the Museum's Archive was revealed and illuminated.
As she mentioned: "At The Kazantzakis Museum we often say that with the material available on Zorba there could be a separate Zorba Museum. We therefore believe that Soloup's new book also fits into this framework. It stays in the story, follows the path of the book's metaphors, reconstructions, and reconstructions, and certainly shows that with the required study and immersion in Kazantzakis's work, a new work can be created, an original work, which converses with the original work and illuminates aspects that may not have been so much highlighted."
