Czeslaw Milosz FAMILY EUROPE IL first edition

MILOSZ Czeslaw: RODZINNA EUROPA Instytut Literacki, first edition, Paris 1959, pp. 246[2] 21x13.5cm

"Famous Europe" - a biographical essay by Czeslaw Milosz published by the Literary Institute in Paris in 1959 as the 50th volume of the Library of "Culture". The first national edition in official circulation appeared in 1990.

The book was written in the 1950s in Montgeron, and was completed in Paris in 1958. It is a study of Eastern Europe based on the author's biography, and is a kind of intellectual autobiography addressing the great problems of the era. In the introduction, the author explains that it is an attempt to tell other Europeans what it means to be Eastern European. Milosz describes, among other things, his family genealogy, his childhood and youth, his war experiences, his attitude to Marxism and Catholicism."

Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz described the essay with the epithet "satanic book," while Maria Dabrowska admired it: "This is Milosz's masterpiece. The equivalent of Pan Tadeusz in our literature today is Milosz's Family Europe."