The Hermit of 69th Street The Working Papers of Norbert Kosky

"The hermit of 69th Street is the most ambitious of Jerzy Kosinski's fictional works--which include his world-renowned novel The painted bird--and is his most personal novel to date. Dubbed an 'autofiction' by the author, it is at once suspenseful and funny, savage and tender, sexual and pious. It is the compulsive adventure in which Kosinski explores the complex universe of one Norbert Kosky, a fifty-four-year-old survivor of the Holocaust, immigrant to America from the only slightly mythical country of Ruthenia, and successful but tortured writer in search of spiritual order and freedom in the ultimate sense, especially the freedom to be himself."--1st prelim. page.