It is the tale of a young Greek intellectual who ventures to escape his bookish life with the aid of the boisterous and mysterious Alexis Zorba.

He is about to begin reading his copy of Dante's Divine Comedy when he feels he is being watched; he turns around and sees a man of around sixty peering at him through the glass door of the café.

He claims expertise as a chef, a miner, and player of the santouri, and introduces himself as Alexis Zorba, a Greek born in Macedonia.

On arrival, they reject the hospitality of Anagnostis and Kondomanolious the café-owner, and on Zorba's suggestion make their way to Madame Hortense's hotel, which is nothing more than a row of old bathing-huts.

The narrator spends Sunday roaming the island, the landscape of which reminds him of "good prose, carefully ordered, sober… powerful and restrained" and reads Dante.

Alienated by the villagers' harshness and amorality, and having spent all of his remaining funds on a mining-related construction project that ends in a spectacular collapse, the narrator finds himself beset by doubts and uncertainty.

[4] The book has been adapted many more times in languages other than English, including a 1972 German-language telemovie, and a 1987–88 ballet, Zorba il Greco, by Mikis Theodorakis produced at the Verona Arena.