The Captive Mind, Czeslaw Milosz
The Captive Mind, Czeslaw Milosz
2 Rating(s)
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

The Captive Mind

Author: Czeslaw Milosz, Jane Zielonko

Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki

Unabridged: 9 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/28/2017

Synopsis

The best-known prose work by the winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature examines the moral and intellectual conflicts faced by men and women living under totalitarianism of the left or right.Written in the early 1950s, when Eastern Europe was in the grip of Stalinism and many Western intellectuals placed their hopes in the new order of the East, this classic work reveals in fascinating detail the often beguiling allure of totalitarian rule to people of all political beliefs and its frightening effects on the minds of those who embrace it.

About Czeslaw Milosz

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) was born in Szetejnie, Lithuania. He worked with the Polish resistance movement in Warsaw during World War II and was later stationed in Paris and Washington, DC, as a cultural attaché of the Polish People’s Republic. Milosz defected to France in 1951, and in 1960 he accepted a position at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his many prizes and honors are the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Berkeley Citation, the Nobel Prize in Literature, and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

About Claire Bloom

Claire Bloom, CBE, is an English film and stage actress, known for leading roles in plays such as Streetcar Named Desire, A Doll’s House, and Long Day’s Journey into Night, along with nearly sixty films and countless television roles, during a career spanning over six decades. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Queen’s birthday honors for services to drama.

About Stefan Rudnicki

Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than five thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than nine hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices in 2012.

Reviews

Goodreads review by William2 on October 07, 2019

The Captive Mind was first published in English translation by Secker and Warburg in 1953. The work was written soon after the author's defection from Stalinist Poland in 1951. While writing The Captive Mind Milosz drew upon his experiences as an illegal author during the Nazi Occupation and of bein......more

Goodreads review by Maciek on April 14, 2015

PL: Recenzja w dwóch językach - tekst angielski znajduje się pod polskim. ENG:This is a bilingual review - English text is presented below. PL: Pomysł lektury Zniewolonego Umysłu Czesława Miłosza przyszedł do mnie krótko po skończeniu Imperium Ryszarda Kapuścińskiego - obszernego reportażu z podróży......more

Goodreads review by Kelly on May 23, 2008

This book was absolutely fascinating. The arguments he made to explain the capitulation of writers and artists under communism were things I would have never thought of before. It's a good read to help blow away any bits of American propaganda about Soviets that are being taught in school still, and......more

Quotes

“A central text in the modern effort to understand totalitarianism.” New York Times Book Review

“A faultlessly perceptive analysis…As timely today as when it was first written.” Jerzy Kosiński, award-winning Polish American novelist

“Miłosz’s political masterpiece The Captive Mind, published in 1953 and originally banned in the author’s native Poland… sets out to answer the question: How did the wisest of his postwar compatriots fall for Stalinism—that is, for a politics of lies and fear?…Trumpism is not Stalinism, but the relevance of Milosz’s insights—that intellectuals yearn to ‘belong to the masses’; that there is never a shortage of ways to justify cruelty in the name of the presumptively higher truth; that those who refuse to conform are caricatured as self-righteous purists—continues to haunt me…When Milosz won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980, the committee cited his ‘uncompromising clear-sightedness.’ Just so.” New York Times

Awards

  • New York Times   Bestseller
Add to Cart
Add to Wish List