The Painted Bird - Literary Significance & Criticism

Literary Significance & Criticism

According to the filmmaker Agnieszka Piotrowska, the novel was "described by Arthur Miller and Elie Wiesel as one of the most important books in the so-called Holocaust literature." Wiesel wrote in The New York Times Book Review that it was: "One of the best... Written with deep sincerity and sensitivity" Richard Kluger, reviewing it for Harper's Magazine, wrote: "Extraordinary... literally staggering ... one of the most powerful books I have ever read". And Jonathan Yardley, reviewing it for The Miami Herald, wrote: "Of all the remarkable fiction that emerged from World War II, nothing stands higher than Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird. A magnificent work of art, and a celebration of the individual will. No one who reads it will forget it; no one who reads it will be unmoved by it. The Painted Bird enriches our literature and our lives". "Cynthia Ozick later gushed" – wrote Norman Finkelstein – "that she 'immediately' recognized Kosiński's authenticity as 'a Jewish survivor and witness to the Holocaust'." Time magazine included the novel in its "TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005", accentuating the alleged atrocities perceived by the protagonist.

"Perhaps the most surprising element of this aspect of Kosiński's mystifications is that he obtained from his mother, who was still alive in Poland – the father had died by the time The Painted Bird was published – a letter corroborating the claim that he had been separated from his family during the war."

Norman Finkelstein, former professor of political science at DePaul University, wrote in The Holocaust Industry: "Long after Kosiński was exposed as a consummate literary hoaxer, Wiesel continued to heap encomiums on his "remarkable body of work." Finkelstein wrote that Kosiński's book “depicts the Polish peasants he lived with as virulently anti-Semitic” even though they were fully aware of his Jewishness and “the dire consequences they themselves faced if caught.”

The book's reception in Poland was far from uniform nevertheless. The Polish literary critic and University of Warsaw professor, Paweł Dudziak, noted that the Painted Bird is a great, if controversial piece. He stressed that since the book is surreal – a fictional tale – and does not present, or claim to present - real world events, accusations of anti-Polish sentiment are nothing but a misunderstanding of the book by those who take it too literally.