![[Kosinski Picture]](Kosinski_01.JPG)
Jerzy Nikodem Kosinski (photograph courtesy of Czeslaw Czaplinski)
(1933 - 1991)
writer, novelist
Born in Lodz, Poland in 1933. A student of American Sociology, he left Poland for New York in 1957, and later become a U.S. citizen.
Jerzy Kosinski is the author of:
(both collections of essays published under the pen name of Joseph Novak)
The Future is Ours, Comrade (1960)
No Third Path (1962)
Novels:
Almost all of Kosinski's novels were on the best seller list, and were translated into over 30 languages, with total copies estimated in the millions. Kosinski won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger for "The Painted Bird" (France); National Book Award for "Steps"; the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, best Screenplay of the Year Award for "Being There" (the film starred Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine) from both the Writers Guild of America and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, (BAFTA); the B'rith Shalom Humanitarian Freedom Award; the Polonia Media Award; and the American Civil Liberties Union First Amendment Award; and the International House Harry Edmonds Life Achievement Award.
The Painted Bird (1965)
Steps (1968)
Being There (1971)
The Devil Tree (first published in 1973, revised in 1981)
Cockpit (1975)
Blind Date (1977)
Passion Play (1979)
Pinball (1982)
The Hermit of 69th Street (1988)
As a Guggenheim Fellow, Kosinski studied at the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University; subsequently he taught American prose at Princeton, and Yale Universities. He then served the maximum two terms as President of the American Center of PEN, the international association of writers and editors. He practised the photographic arts, with one-man exhibitions to his credit in Warsaw's Crooked Circle Gallery (1957), and in the Andre Zarre Gallery in New York (1988).
In his film-acting debut in "Reds," a Paramount picture made with Warren Beatty, Kosinski portrayed Grigori Zinoviev, a Russian revolutionary leader. He is a recipient of Ph.D. Honoris Causa in Hebrew Letters from Spertus College of Judaica and of Humane Letters from both Albion College, Michigan (1988) and Potsdam College of New York State University (1989).
Kosinski died May 3, 1991 at his home in New York City, apparently by his own hand.
Information about the book: KOSINSKI'S PASSIONS
From: Resume
Jerzy Kosinski (1933-1991)
Novelist and screenplay writer
Polish novelist of Jewish origin, who survived World War II under a false identity in a Catholic family in eastern Poland. After the war Kosinski was reunited with his parents and earned degrees in history and political science from the University of Lodz. In 1957 he immigrated to the United States.
Kosinski is best known for the surreal novel The Painted Bird (1965) and Being There (1971), later made into a movie. Kosinskišs screenplay won the 1980 British Academy of Film and Television Arts Best Screenplay Award, as well as the Writers Guild of America Award. His 1968 novel Steps won the National Book Award.
In 1991 Kosinski committed suicide, leaving behind a note: "I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call the time Eternity." He remains a controversial figure. After the publishing of The Painted Bird he was accused of confabulation and anti-Polonism but always defended himself maintaining that the novel was pure fiction and a general metaphor for the human condition.
From: Good News 2005 - 2006. A publication of the American Institute of Polish Culture of Miami, Florida.