The Painted Bird
Jerzy Kosiński • 1965
Devastation Rating
war trauma survival historical horror
Our Take
A child wanders through wartime Europe and the continent tries to destroy him in every way it can imagine. Kosiński's prose is cold and clinical and that coldness makes everything worse. This is not a book you survive unscathed. It is a reckoning with what human beings are capable of when no one is watching.
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