The Painted Bird

Summary:

Semiautobiographical novel by Jerzy Kosinski, published in 1965 and revised in 1976. The ordeals of the central character parallel Kosinski's own experiences during World War II. A dark-haired Polish child who is taken for either a Gypsy or a Jew loses his parents in the mayhem of war and wanders through the countryside at the mercy of the brutal, thickheaded peasants he meets in the villages. He learns how to stay alive at any cost, turning survival into a moral imperative. Full of graphic scenes depicting rape, torture, and bestiality, the novel portrays evil in all its manifestations and speaks of human isolation as inevitable.

BOOKS BY JERZY KOSINSKI

NOVELS

The Painted Bird

Steps

Being There

The Devil Tree

Cockpit

Blind Date

Passion Play

Pinball

The Hermit of 69th Street

ESSAYS

Passing By

Notes of the Author

The Art of the Self

NONFICTION

(Under the pen name Joseph Novak)

The Future Is Ours, Comrade

No Third Path

To the memory of my wife Mary Hayward Weir

without whom even the past would

lose its meaning

Copyright © 1965, 1976 by Jerzy N. Kosinski

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First published in the United States of America in 1976 by Houghton Mifflin Company

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The painted bird/Jerzy Kosinski; with an introduction by the author.—2nd ed.

eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9575-3

1. Poland—History—Occupation, 1939-1945—Fiction. 2. World War, 1939-1945—Europe, Eastern—Fiction. 3. Abandoned children—Europe, Eastern—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3561.O8P3 1995 813’.54—dc20                                            95-19520

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and only God,

omnipotent indeed,

knew they were mammals