Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition
Written by Czeslaw Milosz
Translated from the Polish by Catherine S. Leach

In his compelling autobiography, Native Realm, Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz offers a vivid account of his early life in his homeland and elsewhere in Europe, from his childhood days to the early 1950s. As a witness to immense social and political upheaval, Milosz examines the development of his own moral and intellectual history against the backdrop of many of the defining events of the twentieth century. These reflections lead him to question the possibility of finding glimmers of meaning in the midst of chaos while, at the same time, remaining true to oneself.

Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition traces the inimitable efforts of one of the twentieth century's greatest literary figures to define himself, his work, and the world around him. Elegant and eloquent, this vibrant autobiography stands as one of Milosz's most important works.

"Amazingly creative. . . Native Realm is an ambitious attempt at an autobiography told as social history."
GEORGE GOMORI, World Literature Today

"Lucid, graceful and not lacking a sense of the absurd... [A] brilliant memoir."
ROBERT TAYLOR, The Boston Globe

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 8.25"
300 pages
English Language Version

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