Jerzy Kosinski

Martin Kich (Wright State University)

Ed. by Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 14 Jun 1933
Died 3 May 1991
Activity 1965-1988

Places

Born in Poland
Active in United States

Cultural Identities

Jewish European

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Resources

Kosinski's Works

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Jerzy Kosinski was born to well-educated Jewish parents in Lodz, Poland, in 1933. During his formative years, he managed to survive the horrors of the Second World War and the virulent anti-Semitism of the Polish countryside as he shunted from one “guardian” to another. In the decade following the war, he received an advanced degree in sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences and was selected to conduct further research at Moscow's Lomonosov University. In 1957 he emigrated to the United States, becoming a naturalised citizen in 1965. In those eight intervening years, he taught himself English, did graduate work at Columbia and the New School for Social Research, wrote two nonfictional studies of Soviet life under the pseudonym Joseph Novak, met and married the steel heiress Mary…

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1242 words

Citation: Kich, Martin. "Jerzy Kosinski". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 January 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2558, accessed 23 November 2024.]