In the prologue to an autobiographical novel titled for a “Report” to this country, an author describes God telling him to “Reach what you cannot!” For 10 points each:
[10m] What country is the setting of a novel in which the narrator sleeps in a hut owned by Madame Hortense and tries to re-open a lignite mine?
ANSWER: Greece [or Hellenic Republic; or Elliniki Dimokratia; or Ellas; or Ellada; accept Report to Greco] (The novel in the last sentence is Zorba the Greek.)
[10h] In Report to Greco, Nikos Kazantzakis describes his father, who had this first name. Kazantzakis’s father may have inspired a novel in which a “Captain” with this first name uses the slogan “Freedom or death!”
ANSWER: Michalis [accept Michalis Kazantzakis; accept Michael or Michales or Captain Michalis]
[10e] Nikos Kazantzakis called this figure one of his four “decisive steps” in Report to Greco. Kazantzakis wrote a “Modern Sequel” to an epic about this figure in which he returns to Ithaca after the Trojan War.
ANSWER: Odysseus [or Ulysses] (The Kazantzakis epic is The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel.)
<Editors, European Literature>