Milosz's ABC's
Written by Czeslaw Milosz
Translated from the Polish by Madeline G. Levine

The ABC book is a Polish genre, a literary from loosely composed of short, alphabetically arranged entries. Milosz's telling eye for detail and sharp judgments create unforgettable portraits as he combines sketches of characters from his earlier prose works and his poems with references to real historical figures. Simone de Beauvior, Albert Camus, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Edward Hopper, and Arthur Koestler are among those who come under his scrutiny, along with the poets Charles Baudelaire and Robert Frost and the Polish writers Witold Gombrowicz and Zbigniew Herbert.

Witty, erudite, eloquent, and outspoken, Milosz's ABC's is at once a fascinating self-portrait and a unique reflection on twentieth-century politics, poetry, and prose.

"Few writers in our time can rival Milosz's ability to render justice to the strange spectacle of the world. We should be grateful for the wisdom of his extraordinary life."
JAROSLAW ANDERS, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Milosz shows himself a master of the informal sketch."
HELEN VENDLER, The New York Review of Books

CZESLAW MILOSZ was born in Szetejnie, Lithuania in 1911. A witness to the devastation of Lithuania and Poland by the Nazi and Stalinist tides, he survived World War II in German-occupied Warsaw with his wife, Janina, publishing in the underground press. After the war he was stationed as a cultural attache from Poland in New York, Washington, and Paris; he defected to France in 1951. In 1960 he accepted a position at the University of California at Berkeley. Milosz received the 1978 Neustadt International Prize in Literature and the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in Krakow, Poland, in 2004.

Publishing House: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2002
SoftCover book measuring 5.5" x 7.5"
313 pages
English Language Version

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