Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition
By (Author) Czeslaw Milosz
Translated by Catherine S. Leach
Penguin Books Ltd
Penguin Classics
28th May 2014
27th March 2014
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Cold wars and proxy conflicts
891.858709
Paperback
320
Width 130mm, Height 198mm, Spine 20mm
239g
The memoir of the Nobel laureate, and one of the twentieth century's greatest poets After The Second World War, Czeslaw Milosz was exiled for many years from his home country of Poland. In Native Realm, he evokes that homeland and his years away from it; how it nurtured him and how its divisions and destruction shaped a generation. Exploring such diverse memories as a Soviet officer drinking tea with his little finger sticking out, or two Chinese girls passing, laughing, by a New York subway station, Milosz uses these to both 'bring Europe closer to the Europeans' and to capture the formative moments in his life, from his Catholic education to his time in Paris, all with his distinctive honesty, elegance and self-awareness. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. Born in Lithuania while it was still part of the Russian Empire, he lived much of his life in Poland or exiled in California. He was the author of one of the definitive books on totalitarianism, The Captive Mind, but also wrote with extraordinary vividness and moral authority on his childhood, his experiences under Nazism and on the tragedy of Central Europe.