Poland’s lower house of parliament has voted for a bill declaring 2011 Czeslaw Milosz Year.

MPs from all parties passed the bill after opposition Law and Justice politicians initially opposed the idea of marking the work of the late writer, Czeslaw Milosz, who died in 2004.

Czeslaw Milosz was a Polish poet and prose writer of Lithuanian origin, best known for The Captive Mind, his fierce attack on the communist system.

The year will also be celebrated in Lithuania, USA, France, China, India, Israel; and Russia to coincide with the author and poet’s 100 birth anniversary , which falls on 30 June.

Milosz defected from communist Poland in 1951and obtained political asylum in France. In 1960 he emigrated to the US and  lectured at the University of California.

In 1980 Miłosz received the Nobel Prize for Literature, which made Poles aware of his existence, since his works had been banned in Poland by the communist government.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain Milosz visited Poland and divided his home between Krakow and Berkeley .

He died in 2004 in his Krakow  home at the age of 93. (ab/pg)