The Painted Bird – Jerzy Kosinski (Second Edition – Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1976)

This Houghton Mifflin second edition (1976) is of interest to collectors of Jerzy Kosinski, post-war European literature in translation, and significant American literary hardcovers of the 1970s.

About: A good-plus copy in the original dust jacket. Boards clean and tight beneath jacket; dust jacket bright and largely clean with the striking black and white design — boy's portrait with wartime woodcut-style illustrations — some wear and chipping to the head of the spine panel and minor nicks to corners, otherwise presentable. Text block clean and fresh throughout. A solid copy of this important revised edition, complete with the author's new introduction.

Details:

• Title: The Painted Bird
• Author: Jerzy Kosinski
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston
• Publication Date: 1976 (first published 1965)
• Edition: Second Edition - The New Edition Complete & Revised, with an Introduction by the Author
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good+
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good+

Synopsis: The revised second edition of Kosinski's landmark novel, in the original Houghton Mifflin dust jacket, complete with the author's new introduction. Blurbs from Arthur Miller, Luis Buñuel, Anaïs Nin, the New York Times Book Review, and the Los Angeles Times to the rear panel.

Review: Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird (1965) is one of the most harrowing and controversial novels of the 20th century. Set in an unnamed Eastern European country during the Second World War, it follows a young dark-haired boy, presumed to be Jewish or Romani, as he wanders alone through a landscape of peasant superstition, violence, and survival. Kosinski's unflinching prose transforms the experience of wartime atrocity into a work of savage literary power. This second edition of 1976, complete and revised with a new introduction by the author, represents Kosinski's definitive text and is the edition most widely read and studied. Arthur Miller called it ‘a powerful blow on the mind’; Luis Buñuel described it as ‘perhaps the book which has impressed me the most.’