He learns how to stay alive at any cost, turning survival into a moral imperative.

A dark-haired Polish child who is taken for either a Gypsy or a Jew loses his parents in the mayhem of war and wanders through the countryside at the mercy of the brutal, thickheaded peasants he meets in the villages. The ordeals of the central character parallel Kosinski's own experiences during World War II. Summary: Semiautobiographical novel by Jerzy Kosinski, published in 1965 and revised in 1976.