The Captive Mind

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.

The Captive Mind (Polish: Zniewolony umysl) is a 1953 work of nonfiction by Polish writer, academic and Nobel laureate, Czeslaw Milosz, translated into English by Jane Zielonko and originally published by Secker and Warburg. The book was written soon after the author received political asylum in Paris following his break with Poland's Communist government. It draws upon his experiences as an underground writer during World War II, and his position within the political and cultural elite of Poland in the immediate post-war years. The book attempts to explain both the intellectual allure of Stalinism and the temptation of collaboration with the Stalinist regime among intellectuals in post-war Central and Eastern Europe. Milosz describes the book as having been written "under great inner conflict".