The Seizure of Power is a difficult book to discuss—and must be approached on several levels. For it lies, I think, somewhere between the two pure types of the art-dominated and the politics-dominated book. It is part journalism, part poetry, and part novel….

The central problem is to explain the relationship of intellectuals and artists to the Communist movement…. In analyzing their relation to Communism, Milosz is subtle and brilliant….

If his novel were simply a political roman a clef one would judge it a complete success.

But The Seizure of Power intends to be more than this. It does not succeed, yet the very attempt, the fact that this is not simply an allegory, increases its value immeasurably….

[The] artist constantly intrudes upon the ideologist. There are the insights, the snatches of humanity, the dimension deeper than politics, yet this quality is not sustained; it is...