The Pianist : The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939–1945

Named one of the Best Books of 1999 by the Los Angeles Times , The Pianist is now a major motion picture directed by Roman Polanski and starring Adrien Brody ( Son of Sam ). The Pianist won the Cannes Film Festival's most prestigious prize--the Palme d'Or. On September 23, 1939, Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor live on the radio as shells exploded outside--so loudly that he couldn't hear his piano. It was the last live music broadcast from Warsaw: That day, a German bomb hit the station, and Polish Radio went off the air. Though he lost his entire family, Szpilman survived in hiding. In the end, his life was saved by a German officer who heard him play the same Chopin Nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. Written immediately after the war and suppressed for decades, The Pianist is a stunning testament to human endurance and the redemptive power of fellow feeling.

Named one of the Best Books of 1999 by the Los Angeles Times, The Pianist is now a major motion picture directed by Roman Polanski and starring Adrien Brody (Son of Sam). The Pianist won the Cannes Film Festival’s most prestigious prize—the Palme d’Or.

On September 23, 1939, Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor live on the radio as shells exploded outside—so loudly that he couldn’t hear his piano. It was the last live music broadcast from Warsaw: That day, a German bomb hit the station, and Polish Radio went off the air.

Though he lost his entire family, Szpilman survived in hiding. In the end, his life was saved by a German officer who heard him play the same Chopin Nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. Written immediately after the war and suppressed for decades, The Pianist is a stunning testament to human endurance and the redemptive power of fellow feeling.

Los Angeles Times Book Review - Michael Frank

...a significant contribution to the literature of remembrance, a document of lasting historical and human value. Unforgivably overlooked since its publication (in Polish) in 1946 and translated into English just now for the first time, the book is a relative rarity: an account of the Holocaust written in the immediate aftermath of the experience itself. It has all the rawness and specificity of horrors painfully and uncomprehendingly withstood and afterward just as uncomprehendingly -- but necessarily -- recorded. Writing this book would seem to have been a further act of survival by a man who performed more of them in six years than most human beings do in a lifetime.

The “striking” holocaust memoir that that inspired the Oscar-winning film “conveys with exceptional immediacy... the author's desperate fight for survival” (Kirkus Reviews).On September 23, 1939, Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor live on the radio as shells exploded outside—so loudly that he couldn't hear his piano. It was the last live music broadcast from Warsaw: That day, a German bomb hit the station, and Polish Radio went off the air.Though he lost his entire family, Szpilman survived in hiding. In the end, his life was saved by a German officer who heard him play the same Chopin Nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. Written immediately after the war and suppressed for decades, The Pianist is a stunning testament to human endurance and the redemptive power of fellow feeling.“Szpilman's memoir of life in the Warsaw ghetto is remarkable not only for the heroism of its protagonists but for the author's lack of bitterness, even optimism, in recounting the events.” —Library Journal“Employing language that has more in common with the understatement of Primo Levi than with the moral urgency of Elie Wiesel, Szpilman is a remarkably lucid observer and chronicler of how, while his family perished, he survived thanks to a combination of resourcefulness and chance.” —Publishers Weekly“[Szpilman's] account is hair-raising beyond anything Hollywood could invent... an altogether unforgettable book.” —The Daily Telegraph“[Szpilman's] shock and ensuing numbness become ours, so that acts of ordinary kindness or humanity take on an aura of miracle.” —The Observer A Jewish Pianist's Real-life Account Of Survival In World War Ii Warsaw. Hour Of The Children And The Mad -- War -- First Germans -- My Father Bows To The Germans -- Are You Jews? -- Dancing In Chłodna Street -- Fine Gesture By Mrs K -- Anthill Under Threat -- Umschlagplatz -- Chance Of Life -- Marksmen Arise! -- Majorek -- Trouble And Strife Next Door -- Szałas' Betrayal -- In A Burning Building -- Death Of A City -- Life For Liquor -- Nocturne In C Sharp Minor -- Postscript -- Extracts From The Diary Of Captain Wilm Hosenfeld -- Epilogue: A Bridge Between Władysław Szpilman And Wilm Hosenfeld / Wolf Biermann. Władysław Szpilman ; With Extracts From The Diary Of Wilm Hosenfeld ; Foreword By Andrzej Szpilman ; Epilogue By Wolf Biermann ; Translated By Anthea Bell. "The war cast Warsaw into the horror of occupation, the ghetto, the rounding up of the Jews, the uprising and the evacuation of the city - events that killed most of Szpilman's friends and all of his family. But incredibly he survived among the ruins of his beloved city. The Pianist is both an extraordinary story of one man's tenacity in the face of death, and a testament to the resilience of humanity itself - Szpilman's life was saved by a German officer who heard him play the same Chopin nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. That officer died in a Russian POW camp, but he left behind a diary expressing his fierce despair at the barbarity of National Socialism "On September 23, 1939, Wladyslaw Szpilman, a young Warsaw pianist, played Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp Minor live on the radio, while German shells exploded outside - so loudly that he couldn't hear his piano. It was the last live music broadcast from Warsaw: Later that day, a German bomb destroyed the power station, and Polish Radio went off the air."--Jacket A Jewish pianist's real-life account of survival in World War II Warsaw. Separated in a mêlée, he fights to rejoin his family as they board the death train, but police block him. "Papa!" he cries. The father waves, "as if I were setting out into life and he was already greeting me from beyond the grave." I began my wartime career as a pianist in the Cafe Nowoczesna, which was in Nowolipki Street in the very heart of the Warsaw ghetto. Extracts from the diary are published here for the first time, alongside Szpilman's memoir."--Jacket