Written by Jerzy Kosiński

Talk about hard to read. This was my second attempt to wade through this grisly novel. The first time, I was so shell-shocked by some of the scenes that I had to put it down. Second time through, though, I gritted my teeth and read on. What awaited me was a novel of an extraordinary Bosch-like vision where excessive brutalities and senseless rapes and killings are the norm. Kosiński’s story follows a dark-haired, olive-skinned boy, abandoned by his parents during World War II, as he wanders alone from one village to another, sometimes hounded and tortured, only rarely sheltered and cared for by peasants of the land who look nothing like the boy. Light skinned and fair haired, the peasants are highly-superstitious and untrusting of the “gypsy vampire,” simply because he looks so different from themselves. Once believed to be autobiographical, it later became known that Kosińksi spent the war years with his parents. Witness to extraordinary atrocities, the boy in the novel, while adapting to his grim circumstances, is able to maintain a sense of dignity and individualism. “I made a promise to myself to remember everything I saw,” the boy says to himself. The boy also becomes a victim of the peasants’ cruelty and endures unspeakable tortures, which confuse him as to his own self-worth: “I stopped blaming others; the fault was mine alone, I thought.” At another point he refers to himself as a “small, black flea.” Even so, he maintains a remarkable resiliency, and this incredibly excruciating book becomes a testament to the human will and its determination to survive.