A quirky, brilliant novel starring Chauncey Gardiner, an enigmatic man who rises from nowhere to become a media phenomenon—“a fabulous creature of our age” (Newsweek). One of the most beloved novels by the New York Times–bestselling and National Book Award–winning author of The Painted Bird and Pinball, Being There is the story of a mysterious man who finds himself at the center of Wall Street and Washington power—including his role as a policy adviser to the president—despite the fact that no one is quite sure where he comes from, or what he is actually talking about. Nevertheless, Chauncey “Chance” Gardiner is celebrated by the media, and hailed as a visionary, in this satirical masterpiece that became an award-winning film starring Peter Sellers. As wise and timely as ever, Being There is “a tantalizing knuckleball of a book delivered with perfectly timed satirical hops and metaphysical flutters” (Time).
From Agate Nesaule, acclaimed by writers across the globe from Doris Lessing to Tim O’Brien, comes a long-awaited novel. In Love with Jerzy Kosinski is a story of courage and persistence, exploring in fiction the themes that gripped readers of Nesaule’s award-winning memoir, A Woman in Amber. After fleeing Latvia as a child, Anna Duja escapes Russian confinement in displaced persons camps and eventually arrives in America. Years later, she finds herself in a different kind of captivity on isolated Cloudy Lake, Wisconsin, living with her disarming but manipulative husband, Stanley. Inspired by the transformation of Polish-Jewish émigré Jerzy Kosinski from persecuted wartime escapee to celebrity author in America, Anna slips away from Stanley and Cloudy Lake in small steps: learning to drive, making friends, moving to Madison, falling in love, and learning to forgive. Readers will applaud the book’s power, the beauty of its prose, and its strong evocation of a woman gradually finding her way in the wake of trauma. Winner, the Chancellor’s Regional Literary Award, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
From the twisted mind of Jerzy Kosinski, a novel of kink and consequences set in the turbulent world of 1970s rock music excess. Jerzy Kosinski’s bestselling novel Pinball, which he wrote for George Harrison, is a rock ‘n’ roll mystery centered on a superstar named Goddard who has, despite his success, managed to keep his identity a secret, even from his closest friends. But a beautiful young woman, obsessed with finding Goddard, stalks him relentlessly, driven by a secret goal that justifies all means. Ricocheting with humor and bursting with erotic intensity, Pinball is a game as intricate, unpredictable, suspenseful, and complex as life. “Pinball is classic Kosinski.” —Chicago Tribune “Kosinski has created a suspenseful, readable, and unsentimental tale that showcases his love for and knowledge of music and examines the nature of fame and success and the frightening alienation and violence it often spawns.” —Library Journal
A spectacular and erotically charged psychological novel from the acclaimed author of Being There and The Painted Bird. George Levanter is an idea man, a small investor, an international playboy, and a ruthless dealmaker whose life is delivered in a series of scorching encounters, each more incredible than the last. From Moscow to Paris, from a Manhattan skyscraper to a California mass murder, Blind Date is a dizzying vision of life among the beautiful people and the thrill-seekers that shows Jerzy Kosinski at the height of his power. “Kosinki’s vitality and inventiveness are as irresistible as ever.” —Time
He was hailed as one of the world’s great writers and intellectuals, with novels like The Painted Bird and Being There. He was acclaimed as a heroic survivor and witness of the Holocaust. He won high literary awards, made the bestseller lists, taught and lectured in prestigious universities, was feted in high society, and became an intimate of the rich and famous in a jet-set world of glitter and glamour. Then, in an expose that sent shock waves throughout the intellectual community, he was denounced as a C.I.A. tool, a supreme con man, and a literary fraud, igniting a firestorm of controversy that consumed his reputation and culminated in his headline-making suicide. Now this compelling biography cuts to the complex heart of the truth about the man and the myth that was Jerzy Kosinski. In so doing, it unfolds a story of reality and deception as fascinating, as moving, as painfully honest, and as revelatory as the most gripping of novels. With research that extends from the Poland of Kosinki’s birth and early life to scrupulous examinations of every allegation against Kosinski throughout his career, James Park Sloan, who knew Kosinski for twenty years before his death, leaves no stone unturned and no mask intact. The facts of Kosinski’s horrific childhood Holocaust experiences are sorted out from the fictions of The Painted Bird. Sloan traces Kosinski’s years as an emigre student at Columbia; his marriage to an alcoholic American millionairess; his first literary mark with anti-Communist writings; his award-winning novels and the controversy surrounding their authorship; his triumphant climb to success on an increasingly shaky stairway of half-truths; his compulsive sexual adventuring in New York's erotic underground; his relationship with such figures as Norman Mailer, Roman Polanski, Henry Kissinger, and others in the political and cultural limelight; and the Gotterdammerung of his life and reputation when an article in the Village Voice cast all he had done in doubt despite his denials and his circle’s support. A dazzling investigation of the tantalizing mystery of an extraordinary man and the tangled roots of his artistry, enriched by frank and intimate testimonies of Kosinski’s widow, Kiki, his friends and lovers, his editors and “helpers”, his defenders and detractors, Jerzy Kosinski is intriguing biography, equal to its subject.
Winner of the National Book Award The Painted Bird is one of the most shocking indictments of Nazi madness and terrors of the Holocaust during World War II. It is a story about the proximity of terror and savagery to innocence and love. It is a vivid and graphic portrayal of the hellish Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe as seen through the eyes of a boy struggling for survival, an alien child lost in a world gone mad.
The classic novel of a boy’s struggle for survival in WWII Poland, from the National Book Award–winning author of Steps and Being There. “In 1939, a six-year-old boy is sent by his anti-Nazi parents to a remote village in Poland where they believe he will be safe. Things happen, however, and the boy is left to roam the Polish countryside. . . . To the blond, blue-eyed peasants in this part of the country, the swarthy, dark-eyed boy who speaks the dialect of the educated class is either Jew, gypsy, vampire, or devil. They fear him and they fear what the Germans will do to them if he is found among them. So he must keep moving. In doing so, over a period of years, he observes every conceivable variation on the theme of horror” (Kirkus Reviews). Originally published in 1965, The Painted Bird established Jerzy Kosinski as a major literary figure. With sparse prose and vivid imagery, it is a story of mythic proportion and timeless human relevance. “One of the best . . . Written with deep sincerity and sensitivity.” —Elie Wiesel, The New York Times Book Review “Of all the remarkable fiction that emerged from World Wat 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.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Miami Herald “Extraordinary . . . Literally staggering . . . One of the most powerful books I have ever read.” —Richard Kluger, Harper’s Magazine “One of our most significant writers.” —Newsweek
In a masterpiece of love and loss by one of the world's greatest writers, Fabian travels in his VanHome from one end of the country to the other, searching, judging, and testing--himself most of all.
Kosinski’s classic, acclaimed as “an impressive novel . . . should confirm [his] position as one of our most significant writers” (Newsweek). A searing novel from a writer of international stature, The Devil Tree is a tale that combines the existential emptiness of Camus’s The Stranger with the universe of international playboys, violence, and murder of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. Jonathan Whalen’s life has been determined from the start by the immense fortune of his father, a steel tycoon. Whalen’s childlike delight in power and status mask a greater need, a desire to feel life intensely, through drugs, violence, sex, and attempts at meaningful connection with other people—whether lovers or the memory of his dead parents. But the physical is all that feels real to him, and as he embarks on a journey to Africa with his godparents, Whalen’s embrace of amoral thrill accelerates toward ultimate fulfillment. “Savage . . . [Whalen is] a foolproof, timeless American character.” —Cosmopolitan
A collection of writings offers a revealing and provocative self-portrait of an author whose life was shrouded in enigma. Jerzy Kosinski was one of the most important and original writers of his time. Passing By serves as his legacy. This collection of essays by the late author features pieces about polo and skiing, levitation, the streets of New York, present-day Poland, the Cannes film festival, celebrities, and more. The man who emerges here has a passion for sport, a quirky sense of fun, an idiosyncratic range of acquaintances stretching from Pope John Paul II to Warren Beatty, and an abiding love of secrets, conundrums, and fantasies. But first and foremost, as he demonstrates in major essays on his novels The Painted Bird and Steps, Kosinski is a powerful, incomparable literary artist. “Kosinski’s vibrant, sexy, questioning voice is fully present.” —The Boston Globe
