Novel
The Painted Bird
Jerzy Kosinski · 1965
Synopsis
A six-year-old boy, with black hair and olive skin, is sent by his parents to the countryside at the start of the war, in an Eastern European country, and placed with an old peasant woman, who dies. He then wanders from village to village, taken in and driven out in turn by fair-haired, light-eyed peasants who take him for a Jew or a Gypsy. A bird-catcher, Lekh, paints the wings of a bird and releases it among its own kind, who attack it until it falls.
Context
The author at first let it be understood that the book told of his childhood, and Elie Wiesel read it that way in the New York Times. In June 1982, an investigation by the Village Voice, signed by Geoffrey Stokes and Eliot Fremont-Smith, claimed that several of his books owed much to collaborators. In 1994, the Polish journalist Joanna Siedlecka established that he had spent the war with his family, in a village that sheltered them. He disputed these accusations. The text is today read as a novel.
Who it is for
A novel of about three hundred pages, of unrelenting and often unbearable violence. It is best to know before reading it that it is not a testimony. Translated by Maurice Pons.
Prizes and reception
Prize for Best Foreign Book in France in 1966, in the essay category, for the translation published by Flammarion.
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