The Painted Bird

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......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......more

The cover of the Mass Market Paperback edition from the 1970s of The Painted Bird features a small section of Hieronymus Bosch hell-landscape -- dressed in sickly green and wearing a white hood, a creature with a man's body and head of a long-beaked bird walks on crutches carrying a large wicker bas......more

I read in the introduction that Kosinski was attacked on several occasions by Polish nationals after publishing this novel. This because it's a merciless mockery and indictment of Polish Catholics and in particular the peasantry. In the 19th century literature tended to romanticise rural communities......more