My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual

Abstract

In My Century great Polish poet Aleksander Wat provides a spellbinding account of life in Eastern Europe in midst of terrible twentieth century. Based on interviews with Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, My Century describes artistic, sexual, and political experimentation-in which Wat was a major participant-that followed end of World War I: an explosion of talent and ideas which, he argues, in some ways helped to open door to destruction Nazis and Bolsheviks soon visited upon world. But Wat's book is at heart a story of spiritual struggle and conversion. He tells of his separation during World War II from his wife and young son, of his confinement in Soviet prison system, of night when sound of far-off laughter brought on a vision of the devil in history. It was then, Wat writes, that I began to be a believer.