Johan de Meij

The Painted Bird

The Painted Bird, the controversial novel by Jerzy Kosinski (1933-1991), tells the story of a Jewish boy during World War II. For his safety, the child was sent to the Polish countryside by his parents. The title refers to a barbaric tradition among Polish farmers. The wings of a captured bird were painted in bright colors, after which the animal was released. Almost immediately, the bird was attacked and pecked to death by its peers. The boy underwent the same fate. Wherever he wandered, the local rural people cruelly mistreated him because of his distinctly different appearance. However, he survives the horrors and is reunited with his parents after the war. To escape the yoke of the Soviet occupation in his country, the Polish-Jewish Kosinski emigrated with counterfeit papers to the United States in 1957, where he became an American citizen in 1965. His landmark novel The Painted Bird was translated into thirty languages and sold millions of copies. Plagued by illness and accusations of betraying his country and plagiarism the writer ended his life in 1991.