Beginning with My Streets

Vilnius is celebrated today as the centre of nationalistic fervour which marked Lithuania's declaration of independence from the USSR and the beginning of the Soviet empire's downfall. But when Nobel Prize-winning author Czeslaw Milosz was born there it was called Wilno, and was Polish. In this book he celebrates this remarkable city, with its rich heritage of diverse cultures, languages and beliefs, using its streetmap as a backdrop to portraits of its people and places. Some are famous, others unknown, but all are described with the same perception and understanding. Literature is, of course, a central theme of the book. Milosz discusses writers as varied as Dostoyevsky, Fennimore Cooper and Swedenborg, as well as many of his Polish and Lithuanian contemporaries.