Tuesday 25th April 18:30 at Waterstones London - Gower Street

Join Czeslaw Milosz biographer Andrzej Franaszek and translators Aleksandra Parker, Michael Parker and Stanley Bill (Lecturer in Polish Studies at the University of Cambridge) for an evening in celebration of Czeslaw Milosz—the great Polish poet and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980 – to coincide with the publication of two extraordinary new books published in English for the first time.

Andrzej Franaszek’s award-winning biography of Czeslaw Milosz offers a rich portrait of the writer and his troubled century, providing context for a larger appreciation of his work. This English-language edition, translated by Aleksandra Parker and Michael Parker, contains a new introduction by the translators, along with historical explanations, maps, and a chronology. Franaszek recounts the poet’s personal odyssey through the events that convulsed twentieth-century Europe: World War I, the Bolshevik revolution, the Nazi invasion and occupation of Poland, and the Soviet Union’s postwar dominance of Eastern Europe.

The Mountains of Parnassus is the Nobel laureate’s unfinished science fiction novel—available in English for the first time ever. Stanley Bill's outstanding translation is classic Milosz, and a necessary companion volume for readers seeking a deeper understanding of his themes. Written in the 1970s, and published posthumously in Polish in 2012, Milosz’s deliberately unfinished novel is set in a dystopian future where hierarchy, patriarchy, and religion no longer exist.

ALL TICKETS INCLUDE WINE AND ARE REDEEMABLE AGAINST BOOKS PURCHASED ON THE NIGHT. BUY TICKETS ONLINE, IN STORE OR BY PHONING 020 7636 1577.

Lead image photo credit: Culture.pl