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59th out of 934 books
—
3,312 voters
The Painted Bird
Originally published in 1965, The Painted Bird established Jerzy Kosinski as a major literary figure. Called by the Los Angeles Times "one of the most imposing novels of the decade," it was eventuallly translated into more than thirty languages.
A harrowing story that follows the wanderings of a boy abandoned by his parents during World War II, The Painted Bird is a dark m
...morePaperback, 234 pages
Published
August 9th 1995
by Grove Press
(first published 1965)
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Reading this one is like opening an oven door and the WHITE HOT BLAST OF HATRED from every page sears your flesh, scars your brain, and when you finish it you cram it shut with relief and throw it quickly into a box marked “Charity” although giving this to anyone would not be any kind of charitable act unless they need something to keep the fire going. What kind of a shitstorm do we have here?
For some reason I thought this was the story of a kid caught up in the Holocaust, i.e. a ghetto and co...more
For some reason I thought this was the story of a kid caught up in the Holocaust, i.e. a ghetto and co...more
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This review is serving as a spiritual tug of war. The Battle of the Conscious. I really don’t know what to think. I hesitate between 2 and 3 stars and Yeah, I know… I’m a heartless bitch. The guilt tells me to rate it higher because of all the persecution and just plain ol’ Horrors that this kid dealt with. As if I’ve lost some humanity if I don’t appreciate this more. But… another part of me is just not feeling it.
It sort of feels like rubbernecking.
Like, it starts off right away with explodi...more
It sort of feels like rubbernecking.
Like, it starts off right away with explodi...more
The first rock thrown again
Welcome to hell, little Saint
Mother Gaia in slaughter
Welcome to paradise, Soldier
Is all BS! All of it! We a failure as a society, as a species, as individuals! We suck! There’s no way in hell anybody can convince me other wise! You know why? Cuz like millions of years ago some sort of ameba divided itself in 2... You know what the first thing it did when It separated itself? It attacked the other weaker part… and that’s what we been doing for fucking millions of years...more
Welcome to hell, little Saint
Mother Gaia in slaughter
Welcome to paradise, Soldier
Is all BS! All of it! We a failure as a society, as a species, as individuals! We suck! There’s no way in hell anybody can convince me other wise! You know why? Cuz like millions of years ago some sort of ameba divided itself in 2... You know what the first thing it did when It separated itself? It attacked the other weaker part… and that’s what we been doing for fucking millions of years...more
One of the most difficult books I've ever read. There's been a lot of furor over the autobiographical "truth" of this novel, and even over the identity of its author, but it certainly feels like an aesthetically true piece of writing. It's morbidly grotesque, unremittingly malevolent, and emotionally deadening in its litany of atrocities: narrator enters town, narrator is abused, narrator leaves town, over and over again. In no way an enjoyable read, and surprising only in the creativity of its...more
I read this book as a young person (aged 13 or 14?), having appropriated it from my father's bookshelves. I remember being truly terrified by Kosinski's story, and it was I think the first time I had to close a book because I simply could not face reading any more. Eventually I did finish it, I think I forced myself.
Years later I would learn of Kosinski's suicide (bag over head in a bathtub) and I believe there had been accusations of plagiarism-- or was it that it was fiction being passed off...more
Years later I would learn of Kosinski's suicide (bag over head in a bathtub) and I believe there had been accusations of plagiarism-- or was it that it was fiction being passed off...more
Jul 06, 2007
Lisa Vegan
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
all interested in holocaust literature, anyone who doesn't need to avoid disturbing books
I read an earlier edition than this. I’ve read many, many holocaust era books and I’d already read quite a few when I read this one. And this says a lot, but this one might be the most horrifying one of them all. This was one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read and yet I loved the book. I read it thinking it was non-fiction; years after I read it, I read that it was fiction, but that doesn’t diminish at all the impact I feel from reading it. It’s truly amazing what people can do to each...more
Warning: I talk about a really gross and disturbing scene from the book in this review, please do not read if you're going to be upset and/or offended by talk of graphic sexual violence.
This book is one of my dad's favourite books of all time, I don't know how many years he's been telling me to read it now and we've always had similar opinions on books before. But The Painted Bird did not live up to my expectations and the whole idea of it just left a very bad taste in my mouth.
Pretty much anyon...more
This book is one of my dad's favourite books of all time, I don't know how many years he's been telling me to read it now and we've always had similar opinions on books before. But The Painted Bird did not live up to my expectations and the whole idea of it just left a very bad taste in my mouth.
Pretty much anyon...more
Kosinski was really out there. The Painted Bird is supposed to be autobiographical, about a youngster escaping from one of the eastern bloc countries during the Nazi era, WWII. It's a good read as I recall. None of his books are for the faint of heart. Read what one of the female reviewers on Goodreads wrote about his novel Cockpit, "Kosinski's one sick fuck". Well, I can't argue with her. So just try one of his other novels before committing to his work, may as well start with Cockpit; you know...more
This is a great novel, and a clear departure from the general style of other WWII-era books.
Probably most noteworthy is Kosinski's use of magical realism, and how it colors his account of the WWII era in Eastern Europe. It presents a region so long ignored by the major continental cultural, political and religious trends that traditional power structures are rendered incapable of governing it. As late as the mid-1940s, witch doctors and an obsession with superstition abound. The area's peasants...more
Probably most noteworthy is Kosinski's use of magical realism, and how it colors his account of the WWII era in Eastern Europe. It presents a region so long ignored by the major continental cultural, political and religious trends that traditional power structures are rendered incapable of governing it. As late as the mid-1940s, witch doctors and an obsession with superstition abound. The area's peasants...more
Ler, para mim, é como viver uma vida paralela sendo os livros as pessoas que caminham ao meu lado nessa vida.
E, tal como as pessoas, há livros que passam por mim e nem levemente me tocam, outros ficam comigo para sempre. Por norma, ficam aqueles que me proporcionaram um convívio mais prazeiroso, mas há outros, que de tão especiais e únicos, também ficam, apesar de me terem destroçado o coração.
“O Pássaro Pintado” é um livro único, pungente, cuja leitura me torturou mas que nunca esquecerei. Um...more
E, tal como as pessoas, há livros que passam por mim e nem levemente me tocam, outros ficam comigo para sempre. Por norma, ficam aqueles que me proporcionaram um convívio mais prazeiroso, mas há outros, que de tão especiais e únicos, também ficam, apesar de me terem destroçado o coração.
“O Pássaro Pintado” é um livro único, pungente, cuja leitura me torturou mas que nunca esquecerei. Um...more
This novel is very graphic and violent (so be prepared!), but I was kind of expecting that since the book jacket describes it as a story about a Jewish boy being sent to live with Eastern European villagers to hide from the Nazis. So I thought it would be a more historical about-the-war/holocaust-type book, like "Night" or something. But the first half of the book has nothing to do with Nazis, only with the boy's brutal experiences with the villagers. And the violence is told in a somewhat alleg...more
The Painted Bird was a controversial book for years after its publication, and it's difficult to separate the book from the controversy. Artistically speaking, I was not terribly impressed by this novel - it seemed to me little more than a parade of macabre episodes. I'm a fan of such horrors when they're described so poignantly that they leap off the page; after all, I just described Blood Meridian as my new favorite novel. But Kosinski's prose is simple, his images blunt-edged and so ugly as t...more
Hmmmm. What a strange book. It was sort of like Slumdog Millionaire without the marginal humor and instead of poor Indian kids wandering the country and having bad things happen to them, the protagonist is a (sort of) orphaned jewish boy during WWII wandering from one small Polish town to the next where horrible masochistic things happen to him (no really, it's pretty gruesome).
Much of the book reminded me of modern day horror films that are perhaps overly grotesque just to see how far they ca...more
Much of the book reminded me of modern day horror films that are perhaps overly grotesque just to see how far they ca...more
This is an incredibly brutal book. I hate to admit it but I didn't finish reading it. It is so graphic in content that I almost threw up. I couldn't believe that people were capable of doing such horrible things to each other. I think that Kosinski is an amazing writer and his description of war torn Europe is excellent. If you have a strong stomach and don't mind reading about horific acts of violence this would be a book for you.
Not sure what to think about this book. Setting aside the whole question of whether Kosinski really wrote it, and assuming that it is in fact fictional, rather than autobiographical, as he originally claimed, I suppose it should be read as a dark little parable. Sort of an anti-fairytale: the naive, innocent child narrator undergoes a series of challenges and meets a series of characters who teach him (and us) that humans are innately evil and prey on whatever is good and innocent in the world a...more
In high school, I was very fortunate to have one of those teachers who turned everything you thought you knew right onto its head and then back around again.
What struck me about this unusual choice of curriculum was its confounding shape-shifting- is it literature, under a subtle guise of autobiograpy, or perhaps just non-fiction?
With "The Painted Bird" as a launching point, I've crafted over time a sort of personal curriculum of Jewish "mystical" narrative, or what might also be considered "in...more
What struck me about this unusual choice of curriculum was its confounding shape-shifting- is it literature, under a subtle guise of autobiograpy, or perhaps just non-fiction?
With "The Painted Bird" as a launching point, I've crafted over time a sort of personal curriculum of Jewish "mystical" narrative, or what might also be considered "in...more
this book helped me recognize the sadistic side of human nature when i encounter it in daily life. it made me believe that there need be no complicated motivation for cruelty- maybe boredom or a feeling of inferiority. cruelty is simple and common and dependable, and it makes a good tool. it made me understand that tendencies toward neglect and cruelty, though maybe forgivable in a single instance, become monstrous when they go unchallenged and become habitual. which is more common in isolated c...more
I don't know how many times I have read this book, but it never ceases to amaze me. The story takes place in Eastern Europe during WWII. Families are sending their children off to hide in the backwoods (and often backwards) villages to avoid the horrors of genocide. What one child finds is equally as terrorizing. Starting at the age of four our character is scared, hungry, beaten, tortured, molested, and struggling to stay alive. This "gypsy" boy slaves his way from village to village escaping p...more
Quite a page-turner. Violent, dark, and heavy, yet very easy to understand and, at times, to relate with. A bildungsroman (coming of age piece) you won't soon forget. The author's foreword was very interesting, as well.
I'm not sure I'd read the whole thing again, but the last few chapters in which he lies down under a train and lets it ride over him or when he finally regains his voice were powerfully and insightful. There are just some really well-written lines that flow like wine in this book....more
I'm not sure I'd read the whole thing again, but the last few chapters in which he lies down under a train and lets it ride over him or when he finally regains his voice were powerfully and insightful. There are just some really well-written lines that flow like wine in this book....more
Let fools argue about Kosiński's biography and "authenticity" of experience. His supreme ability to tell a child's horrific coming-of-age story in rural Nazi-controlled Poland, where the peasants are just as gruesomely sadistic, with adult credibility and moral authority without overreaching or sentimentality, is a dark and bittersweet triumph of humanity and then also of literature.
IMHO, the book was not written as an invective against Polish peasants or Nazis alone, any more than it is solely...more
IMHO, the book was not written as an invective against Polish peasants or Nazis alone, any more than it is solely...more
The Painted Bird describes the evils of war and their effects on a young boy, the narrator who is 6 yrs old when the story opens at the onset of WWII. The innocent, sheltered boy's parents, presumably wealthy Jews, arrange to send away their only child for safekeeping at a Slav village. But due to a series of unfortunate events, the boy finds himself alone and unprotected, as he endures crisis after trauma followed by disaster. With each horror he survives, the boy loses more of his naivete, and...more
Kosinski’s first novel, published in 1965, is a powerful, thought provoking and disturbing work. The plot is simple: “In the fall of 1939, a six year old boy from a large city in Eastern Europe is sent by his parents, like thousands of other children, to the shelter of a distant village,” and through a series of circumstances he moves from one village to another over the course of World War Two. The boy witnesses and is subject to different (often sexual) atrocities in each village, and although...more
There's a lot of hate out there for this book, and I can understand why. Riding the holocaust wave, the torture and violence added in the book just for the shock value, the morbid sexuality and the various rape scenarios, are all good reasons to never touch this book.
However, if you do: you're missing a good story. A story about a boy coming of age. A child trying to survive whilst taking effort to make sense of the nonsensical world. An adolescent trying to find meaning with the limited experi...more
However, if you do: you're missing a good story. A story about a boy coming of age. A child trying to survive whilst taking effort to make sense of the nonsensical world. An adolescent trying to find meaning with the limited experi...more
(This isn't so much a review as a memory...)
... It was one of those books I "had" to read in high school. The three other books I'd read so far that brought such visceral impact were Anne Frank's *Diary of a Young Girl*, Anna Sewell's *Black Beauty*, and Charlotte Bronte's *Jane Eyre* ... I was about sixteen when I read *The Painted Bird*.
This, George Orwell's *1984*, and William Shakespeare's *Macbeth* were the three literary works that haunted me after high school ... Then, it was C.S. Lewis,...more
... It was one of those books I "had" to read in high school. The three other books I'd read so far that brought such visceral impact were Anne Frank's *Diary of a Young Girl*, Anna Sewell's *Black Beauty*, and Charlotte Bronte's *Jane Eyre* ... I was about sixteen when I read *The Painted Bird*.
This, George Orwell's *1984*, and William Shakespeare's *Macbeth* were the three literary works that haunted me after high school ... Then, it was C.S. Lewis,...more
The Painted Bird is about a young boy during WWII. His parents, fearing Nazi retaliation for his father's vocal anti-Nazi views, send their son to a foster family in a country village in an unnamed Eastern European country. When his foster mother dies, the boy ends up wandering on his own trying to survive in a cruel world fulll of superstition and fear. He experiences cruelty in many forms as he goes from home to home. Sometimes the cruelty comes from German soldiers, but usually it is simply t...more
I recently had to read this book for a college course. Although the novel is very detailed and graphic, I think it is taken ti literally. As you must know, it is a fiction novel.
On the surface, the novel can be very off-putting. However, after reading the novel my professor opened my mind to it's true meaning. I could not understand why the boy was given no name until my professor explained how the "boy" is really all of us. He is The Painted Bird, and if you read the novel you know what happene...more
On the surface, the novel can be very off-putting. However, after reading the novel my professor opened my mind to it's true meaning. I could not understand why the boy was given no name until my professor explained how the "boy" is really all of us. He is The Painted Bird, and if you read the novel you know what happene...more
2. Dünya savaşında ailesi tarafından güvenliği için uzak bir köye gönderilen bir çocuğun oradan oraya savruluşunu anlatıyor. Genel olarak sinirleri zorlayan, konu olmuş insanların yapabildiklerinden dehşete düşeceğiniz, vahşet dolu günler, yıllar okuyacaksınız. Hitlerin yaptığı katliamı düşününce, esmer olan bu küçük çocuğun gözünden bakıldığında, savaş bitiminde yeryüzünde sarı saçlı, mavi gözlü insanlardan başkasının kalmayacağını düşünmek kadar saf bir düşünce yoktur.
Benim kitapta gördüğüm; ç...more
Benim kitapta gördüğüm; ç...more
Having seen this on Time's 100 best fiction books and it having sat on my shelf for several years, I felt compelled to read this finally. I sort of hoped I had read my last bit of WWII fiction earlier this year but from the beginning I understood I would be willing to give up that commitment for this story (which I now reinstate).
This story is a crushingly harsh and brutal tale of humanity on the fringes of Nazi occupation of eastern Europe. The debasement faced by those in this tale is relived...more
This story is a crushingly harsh and brutal tale of humanity on the fringes of Nazi occupation of eastern Europe. The debasement faced by those in this tale is relived...more
It is said that great novels can teach us how to read differently and this is certainly true of Kozinski's dark masterpiece. The Painted Bird follows a young boy wandering though the eastern Europe of world war two. Moving from one village to the next, the boy is both witness to and victim of numerous and horrific atrocities. However the book is much more than a catalogue of inhumanity, for Kosinski has created a landscape like a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life; it is a nightmare not only...more
I've been meaning to read this book for some while now. Since I heard about it in Nic Sheff's 'Tweak', it's been on my 'to-read' list, waiting for me to get around to it. A couple days ago, I came across a copy in a used book store, and, seeing as it was marked for only two dollars, I figured I'd give it a go.
I'm half tempted to qualify this book as 'torture porn' literature. How many times was this little boy raped, enslaved, or beaten senseless? Every couple of pages, without a doubt. Before...more
I'm half tempted to qualify this book as 'torture porn' literature. How many times was this little boy raped, enslaved, or beaten senseless? Every couple of pages, without a doubt. Before...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | 3 | 12 | Mar 31, 2013 08:22am | |
| Lloyd 2012: summary | 1 | 2 | Mar 24, 2013 07:57pm | |
| Lloyd 2012: comparing the theme to my life | 1 | 4 | Mar 17, 2013 07:27pm | |
| Lloyd 2012: Point of View | 1 | 3 | Mar 10, 2013 05:48pm | |
| Lloyd 2012: comparing plots | 1 | 2 | Mar 03, 2013 07:20pm | |
| Lloyd 2012: specific words | 1 | 1 | Feb 24, 2013 08:14pm | |
| Lloyd 2012: key events | 1 | 2 | Feb 17, 2013 07:45pm |
Kosiński was born Josef Lewinkopf to Jewish parents in Łódź, Poland. As a child during World War II, he lived in central Poland under a false identity his father gave him to use, Jerzy Kosiński. A Roman Catholic priest issued him a forged baptismal certificate. The Kosiński family survived the Holocaust thanks to local villagers, who offered assistance to Jewish Poles often at great personal risk...more
More about Jerzy Kosiński...
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“There's a place beyond words where experience first occurs to which I always want to return. I suspect that whenever I articulate my thoughts or translate my impulses into words, I am betraying the real thoughts and impulses which remain hidden.”
—
26 people liked it
“It seems that what I really want is a drug that will increase my consciousness of others, not myself.”
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24 people liked it
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