The Painted Bird (signed copy)

London: W.H. Allen, 1966.

First British Edition. Signed presentation copy with inscription on the flyleaf to the author to Australian singer and zither player Shirley Abicair, dated year of publication. Hardback with the excellent dust-jacket, unclipped, slightly rubbed at ends of the backstrip and top edge of the rear panel, also somewhat tanned around edges and backstrip. First published by Houghton Mifflin in the US in 1965, The Painted Bird was marketed as a fictional work although it was generally assumed that it was based on the author's experiences during World War II. Only later did it become clear that Kosiński was neither the boy in the story nor did he share any of the boy's experiences, as revealed in a series of articles in newspapers and books. The depicted events are now widely known to be fictional. The novel was the inspiration for Pearls Before Swine's "Morning Song" (1967), also for Siouxsie and the Banshees, who wrote "Painted Bird" in 1982, on their album "A Kiss in the Dreamhouse".