Painted Bird

Few things are as disturbing as the images of children savaged by the brutalities of a war they had nothing to do with. In The Painted Bird we follow the story of a young boy who loses his parents at the end of the Second World War. As he travels from town to town trying to scrape together enough food to stay alive and enough clothing to stay warm, he soon realizes he'll do anything to survive. Filled with often brutal scenes of rape, murder, bestiality and worse, this novel partially reflects the disturbing childhood of its author, Jerzy Kosinski.

Originally published in 1965, "The Painted bird" established Jerzy Kosinski as a major literary figure. Called by the Los Angeles Times "one of the most imposing novels of the decade, " it was eventuallly translated into more than thirty languages.

A harrowing story that follows the wanderings of a boy abandoned by his parents during World War II, "The Painted Bird" is a dark masterpiece that examines the proximity of terror and savagery to innocence and love. It is the first, and the most famous, novel by one of the most important and original writers of this century.

Jerzy Kosinski, 1933 - 1991 Novelist Jerzy Kosinski was born June 8, 1933, in Poland to Russian parents who had fled the Revolution. In 1939, he was separated from his family when the Nazi's invaded, and he wandered through villages for six years, surviving by his wits. In shock, he remained mute from the age of nine to fourteen. He was finally reunited with his family and attains a professorship at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. In 1957, Kosinski arrived in New York with his Polish passport, little money and a cyanide capsule after creating four fictional professors who recommend him for a nonexistent foundation grant. He learned to speak fluent English in four months and within a year, had begun work on a study of the collective mentality called "The Future is Ours, Comrade." He published this under the pen name Joseph Novak and had his writing recommended to him by fellow students at Columbia University. He won the National Book Award for the novel "Steps" and his other novels include "Being There, "The Devil Tree,""Cockpit," and "Blind Date.""Blind Date" tells the story of the Manson killings, which is where Kosinski would have been, with his friends on Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, if he had not been stuck in JFK Airport dealing with mis-tagged luggage. He writes about the killings not because they were his friends, but to show how unpredictable life is. In 1968, after six years of marriage, his wife Mary died of brain cancer. He committed suicide on May 3, 1991 at the age of 58.