A Year of the Hunter by Czeslaw Milosz, translated by Madeline G. Levine
Non-Fiction suggested by Shirley
One year in Nobelist Milosz’ life, remembering his youth and the writers’ groups of Warsaw and Paris, his life in Berkeley in the sixties. Has he lived his life decently?
Note: This book is hard to find on Amazon. Searching with the title only does not get it. You have to also add the author’s name. (Not available on kindle.)
Amazon: Like Native Realm, Czeslaw Milosz’s autobiography written thirty years earlier, A Year of the Hunter is a “search for self-definition.” A diary of one year in the Nobel laureate’s life, 1987-88, it concerns itself as much with his experience of remembering – his youth in Wilno and the writers’ groups of Warsaw and Paris; his life in Berkeley in the sixties; his time spent with poets and poetry – as with the actual events that shape his days. Throughout, Milosz tries to account for the discontinuity between the man he has become and the youth he remembers himself to have been. Shuttling between observations of the present and reconstructions of the past, he attempts to answer the unstated question: Given his poet’s personality and his historical circumstances, has he managed to live his life decently?