The Painted Bird (novel)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Wikipedia
Featured:  Illustration: Portrait fantaisiste du marquis de Sade (1866) by H. Biberstein |
The Painted Bird is a controversial 1965 novel by Jerzy Kosiński which describes the world as seen by a young black-haired, black-eyed boy who wanders about small towns scattered around Central or Eastern Europe (presumably Poland) during World War II.
“For years Kosiński passed off The Painted Bird as the true story of his own experience during the Holocaust,” wrote D. G. Myers, Associate Professor of English at Texas A&M University. “Long before writing it he regaled friends and dinner parties with macabre tales of a childhood spent in hiding among the Polish peasantry. Among those who were fascinated was Dorothy de Santillana, a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin, to whom Kosiński confided that he had a manuscript based on his experiences.” (from Myers' review of Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography by James Park Sloan [1])
