Facing The River

Czeslaw Milosz is the recipient of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. His most recent publications are Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czeslaw Milosz (FSG, 1997) and Road-side Dog (FSG, 1998). He lives in Berkeley, California. (Publisher Provided) Czeslaw Milosz was born in Szetejnie, Lithuania on June 30, 1911. In 1934, show more he received a degree as Master of Law and traveled to Paris on a fellowship from the National Culture Fund. In 1936, he worked as a literary programmer for Radio Wilno, but was dismissed for his leftist views the following year. He then took a job with Polish Radio in Warsaw. During World War II, he was a member of the Polish resistance. He served as a Polish diplomat in the late 1940s, but defected to Paris in 1951. In 1961, he became a lecturer in Polish literature at the University of California at Berkeley and, later, a professor of Slavic languages and literatures. His works include The Captive Mind, Native Realm, Czeslaw Milosz: The Collected Poems 1931-1987, Bells in Winter, A Year of the Hunter, and Roadside Dog. He received several awards including the Prix Littéraire European from the Swiss Book Guild for The Seizure of Power in 1953, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. He has also translated the works of other Polish writers into English, and has co-translated his own works. He died on August 14, 2004. (Bowker Author Biography) show less