The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski

Jerzy Kosinski

“At times, feeling the wind on my brow, I went numb with horror. In my imagination I saw armies of ants and cockroaches calling to one another and scurrying toward my head, to some place under the top of my skull, where they would build new nests. There they would proliferate and eat out my thoughts, one after another, until I would become as empty as the shell of a pumpkin from which all the fruit has been scraped out.” 

     This is the most disturbing book that I have ever read. I'll repeat this later to emphasize the point. It follows the travels of a likely orphan in WWII Eastern Europe as he tries to survive moving from village to village.  In each new location the local people there find some new means of torturing and brutalizing him.  I enjoy the violence of Tarantino's movies, and can appreciate the thrilling aspect of serial killer shows on TV, I've seen the SAW movies and have studied the atrocities preformed on victims of the holocaust, the images placed into my head from any of these does not compare to the overall feeling of desperateness and hopelessness that Kosinski portrays.  The young boy is heaved into a pit of human feces to drown, buried to his head to be killed by birds, tortured slowly and systematically by his owners, sexually, physically, and emotionally abused at various points. Beastiality even makes an appearance in this novel at one of the more sickening parts. Rape and murder become common place and are described in full detail.  The effects on the young boy are just as alarming in that he turns to a sick and twisted  view of the world and his place within it.  This novel leaves you with no hope or pleasant feeling, and I would consider it as the heaviest of reads. This is the most disturbing book that I have ever read. 4/5