The Captive Mind Audiobook By Czeslaw Milosz, Jane Zielonko - translator, Claire Bloom - director cover art

The Captive Mind

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Captive Mind

By: Czeslaw Milosz, Jane Zielonko - translator, Claire Bloom - director
Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $16.08

Buy for $16.08

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

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.

Written in the early 1950s, when Eastern Europe was in the grip of Stalinism and many Western intellectuals placed their hopes in the new order of the East, this classic work reveals in fascinating detail the often beguiling allure of totalitarian rule to people of all political beliefs and its frightening effects on the minds of those who embrace it.

©2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Classics
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about The Captive Mind

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    140
  • 4 Stars
    28
  • 3 Stars
    8
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    4
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    125
  • 4 Stars
    20
  • 3 Stars
    8
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    122
  • 4 Stars
    22
  • 3 Stars
    8
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    2

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Must read

A great insight into the Polish mind and a taste of a beautiful concept of how to live honestly in the world.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Enlightening and thought-provoking.

A thought-provoking and enlightening. Definitely a must read, especially in this current (political) climate.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

phenomenal

on my G.O.A.T. List. purely phenomenal. the narrator brings a calming, but confident voice that compliments the story perfectly.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

All-time great!

I love this writer’s expression of inner conflict and his wisdom about politics, art, and psychology. Exhilarating to read, yet also full of horrors.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Every U.S. citizen should read this.

I'm glad this book has been resurrected. It's so easy to forget what a totalitarian state does to human beings. And it's also as easy to forget the benefits and pleasures of living in a free nation and the kind of sacrifices required to maintain that freedom. Before the election all U.S. citizens should read The Federalist Papers and this book. Both will clarify our individual civil responsibilities and warn against the insidious and destructive nature of collectivism and unchecked centralized government.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

A Terrifying Warning for All of Us Facing 2024

The Horrors of Life under a Totalitarian Dictatorship recounted by Milosz are not only those suffered by People killed, deported or crippled by their New Masters. The victims he knew so intimately were the Creatives whose Spirits and Minds were broken by the Choices left to them. Collaborate, Submit, Accept Imprisonment or Death, or to Run. In one way or the other to give up who they were. To Lose their Minds.

His Tales, related in the most personal of stories, are of Men forced to surrender to these Options. That’s what makes this a Horror Story. And one that any one of us, sitting comfortably and unwittingly in a Western Democracy should listen to with very close attention.

The Captive Mind is a “This Can Happen Here” story and one that is so timely in 2023. We have seen how thin the strand that held American Liberal Democracy together in the face of Ignorance, Racism and Hate was in 2020. And how powerfully its Narcissistic, Anarchic Christian Nationalism Head might rear itself up in 2024. Milosz wrote after the Rise of Hitler and Stalin but we have seen their rise and fall as well as the tragedies of Mao, Castro, Xi, and so many others following their Playbook.

This book is for anyone who treasures the Values of the Enlightenment, Reason, and Liberal Democracy and would like to maintain a Mind that can enjoy a Life guided by them. Milosz has shown us Life on the other Side of the Coin. Think Donald Drumpf and Steve Bannon. Let’s not go there. Four Stars. ****

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Despite describing a bygone era, timeless

Despite describing a bygone era, still relevant in the sense of Orwell's 1984 describing basic psychological and political mechanisms. Orwell's 1984, Animal Farm, and related writings are definitely better as a reader friendly account of totalitarian society. But this book also has its place as a sort of anthropological study focused on a handful of telling individuals who experienced the transition to Stalinism.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Lively, authentic and persuasive

It is from his from his own authenticity and gifted pen that Milosz provides engaging essays that prevail against the USSR. Stefan Rudnicki does a fine job narrating.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

READ WHILE TRAVELING

Perfect companion book while i travelled through Poland: Warsaw, Krakow, Auschwitz Birkenau and Biszczady mountains.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Amazing!

You enter an obscure world, far from our collective knowledge in the West. It's a work that you can reflect upon and has an eternal value.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!