Jerzy Kosinski was born in Poland in 1933, where almost all his relatives died, victims of the Nazi holocaust. In 1957 he was exiled in the United States, where he died in 1991. He is the author of several novels written in English, among them The painted bird, Steps (awarded with the National Book Award) and From the garden. The film adaptation of the latter, titled in Spain Welcome Mr. Chance, with script by Kosinski himself, had an extraordinary success.