Jerzy Kosinski’s viscerally haunting and politically disturbing The Painted Bird finally receives the long overdue fresh scientific perspective: a truly revealing study of linguistic and cultural controversy in translation into thirteen languages against the benchmark of the iron-clad methodology.

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.

This edited book offers insight into the linguistic construction of prejudice and discrimination in social media. Drawing on the outputs of a three-year research project, NETLANG, involving scholars from five European countries (Portugal, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland and Poland), as well as on external contributions from participants in the project’s final conference, the collection brings together a variety of linguistic approaches to the study of online hate speech, ranging from Pragmatics to Syntax, Lexis, Stylistics, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Corpus Linguistics. Data from English, Portuguese, Danish, Lithuanian, Persian, Polish, and Slovenian are examined, along with various geopolitical contexts for hate speech, especially anti-refugee and anti-immigrant discourse. The authors explore a continuum of overt to covert textual data, namely: (i) structural elements, such as syntactic and morphological patterns found to recur throughout the texts; (ii) lexical and stylistic elements, revealing the often implicit ways vocabulary choices and rhetorical devices signal the expression of hate; and (iii) interactional elements, concerning the pragmatic relationships established in online communicative exchanges. The chapters cover numerous types of prejudice, such as sexism, nationalism, racism, antisemitism, religious intolerance, ageism, and homo/transphobia. The book will be of interest to an academic readership in Linguistics, Media Studies, Communication Studies, and Social Sciences.

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

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 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).

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

Demons is an anti-nihilistic novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It is the third of the four great novels written by Dostoyevsky after his return from Siberian exile, the others being Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. Demons is a social and political satire, a psychological drama, and large scale tragedy.

Examining the controversies that have accompanied the publication of novels representing the Holocaust, this compelling book explores such literature to analyze their violently mixed receptions and what this says about the ethics and practice of millennial Holocaust literature. The novels examined, including some for the first time, are: * Time's Arrow by Martin Amis * The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas * The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski * Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally * Sophie's Choice by William Styron * The Hand that Signed the Paper by Helen Darville. Taking issue with the idea that the Holocaust should only be represented factually, this compelling book argues that Holocaust fiction is not only legitimate, but an important genre that it is essential to accept. In a growing area of interest, Sue Vice adds a new, intelligent and contentious voice to the key debates within Holocaust studies.

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.