Jerzy Kosiński

Jerzy Nikodem Kosiński , born Józef Lewinkopf, was a Polish-American novelist and two-time President of the American Chapter of P. E. N. , who wrote primarily in English.

For several decades, Kosinski was famous as a wit, a great raconteur, and a media celebrity. His first three novels were big hits. However, in June 22, 1982, "Jerzy Kosinski's Tainted Words," an article by Geoffrey Stokes and Eliot Fremont-Smith in The Village Voice, accused Jerzy Kosinski of plagiarism and dishonesty. 'The Painted Bird' was widely considered to be autobiographical; the Voice showed that this shocking tale about a brutalized childhood during the Jewish Holocaust was not after all about Jerzy, who actually lived rather comfortably during the war years.

'Being There', which was adapted as a successful film, was shown to have been plagiarized from an earlier Polish novel. Jerzy Kosinski appeared in two feature films a few documentaries and a large number of talk shows. His parents, Moses (Mojzesz) and Elzbieta (Liniecka) Lewinkopf, were well off, resourceful and cultured—though Elzbieta was an amateur musician, not a concert pianist as her son maintained, and Moses was a manager skilled in languages but not a professor of linguistics.