The Painted Bird. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965.
First edition of the author’s first novel (he had published two non-fiction works as Joseph Novak previously). First issue, with the first line of p. 270 repeated at the top of p. 271.
Octavo. [xii], [1]-272, [4, blank] pp. Publisher’s full brown cloth, front cover lettered in blind, spine lettered in black, dust jacket. Jacket browned at spine and edges, some soiling and edgewear to jacket, cloth rubbed, some soiling to text edges, previous owner’s ink name on front free endpaper, front hinge cracked (yet solid). Still, this is a very good copy.
This book, about an unknown boy wandering around World War II-era Poland, coping with the cruel villagers he encounters is a bit of an enigma. On one hand, Arthur Miller and Elie Wiesel describe it as one of the finest Holocaust novels ever written; on the other, it was banned in Poland until 1989 because its content was considered “anti-Polish,†and some of the assertions made by Kosinski in the novel have come under fire for being inaccurate.
Jerzy Kosinski (1933-1991), born Josek Lewinkopf of Jewish ancestry, survived the Holocaust by living as a member of a Catholic family (even having a forged baptismal certificate, issued by a nearby priest). His assumed name was Jerzy Kosinski, and he kept it for the rest of his life. After he reunited with his real family, he continued his schooling in Poland until 1957, when he emigrated to the United States, where he achieved high academic honors. His novels have sold very well, and have won awards, and one of his novels, Being There, was the basis for the 1979 film starring Peter Sellers.
ID:
3146
$
300