Born in Poland in 1933 of Russian parents who fled the Revolution, he was separated from his family when the Nazis invaded in 1939. For 6 years he wanders from village to village, scorned by East European who fear his hawklike face and penetrating eyes. He survived the German terror, but the shock caused him to remain mute from the age of 9 to 14.
He eventually  reunited with his family, & became a promising student  & an expert skier. The authorities notice him quickly, & by the time he was 24 he had attained a professorship at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. A bright government career seemed to be in his future, but Kosinski has other ideas. A brilliant student of bureaucracy and the collective mind, he invented 4 fictional professors who recommend him for an equally fictional foundation grant in America. He arrived in New York on Dec. 20, 1957 with a Polish passport, $3.80 and a hidden cyanide capsule he never had to take.

His very first book of fiction, The Painted Bird, chronicles the terrors of a homeless child of war. This Appears to be extremely autobiographically account of WWII.
In 1968 he published Steps, a savage, anecdotal story about a man walking through the ruins of war and the reconstruction period. For this he won the National Book Award. In Being There he introduces Chauncey Gardiner, a mentally deficient gardener who, through the mass hypnosis of television, becomes a presidential advisor. This spwaned the Peter seller's movie of the same name. The Devil Tree, explores the visions and corruptions of American wealth. He followed, with the novel Cockpit &, in 1977, Blind Date.
Jerzy Kosinski (1933-91). The haunting novels of Jerzy Kosinski reflect the troubled life of a man whose career was marred by the eccentricities and myths that he had cultivated. In a literary controversy as bizarre as any of his books, some critics attacked him as a fraud whose works were taken from other authors or written largely by editors he had hired, while others defended him as the victim of longtime efforts to discredit both his life & his art.
Rumors about his plagiarisms & ghostwriters were rampant for at least 10 years before a 1982 article in the Village Voice revealed that Kosinski couldn't write English well enough to put his words on paper. The striking stylistic differences apparent from one novel to another can be explained by the fact that he often changed the poorly paid, never-credited "editors" with whom he would sketch out a story line and collaborate as they filled in the details.
His suicide in 1991 at age 58 shocked the outside world but did not surprise many friends. Is there a connection between the rumors & his suicide?
The Painted Bird
(1965)
A dark-haired, olive-skinned boy is forced to fend for himself during the war and wander alone from one Slav village to another, sometimes hounded and tortured, sometimes sheltered and taught. This is a portrayal of the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe, seen through the eyes of a boy.

Steps
(1968)
 A portrayal of men and women both aroused and desensitized by an environment that disdains the individual and seeks control over the imagination.

Being There
(1970)
Tells the tale of Chauncey "Chance" Gardiner, who appears out of nowhere to become the heir to the empire of a Wall Street tycoon, a presidential policy adviser, and a media mogul.

The Devil Tree
(1973)

Cockpit
(1975)
 Meet Tarden, an ex-superspy who, thriving on psychological pressure, penetrates the lives of others, leading his momentary partners in a ruthless dance of complex intrigue.

Blind Date
(1977)
As he moves among heads of state, renowned scientists, national heroes, sex scavengers, and jet-setters, George Levanter, involved with enterprises as businessman, gamesman, and lover, is faced with complex moral choices and emotional shocks.

Passion Play
(1979)
 In a masterpiece of love and loss by one of the world's greatest writers, Fabian travels in his VanHome from one end of the country to the other, searching, judging, and testing--himself most of all.

Pinball
(1982)

Hermit of 69th Street
(1988)