Short description
Thebestselling memoir of a young Jewish pianist who survived the war in Warsaw against all odds, which became a treble-Oscar-winning film.
Long description
'We are drawn in to share his surprise and then disbelief at the horrifying progress of events, all conveyed with an understated intimacy and dailiness that render them painfully close...riveting' OBSERVER 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. 'The images drawn are unusually sharp and clear...but its moral tone is even more striking: Szpilman refuses to make a hero or a demon out of anyone' LITERARY REVIEW
Review
1939. Szpilman was playing a Chopin nocturn when a bomb cut off all power in Warsaw, as Hitler's troops marched into Poland. The terror had started for Polish Jews - deprived of rights, herded into ghettos, transported to concentration camps. Most of Szpilman's friends and family were killed but, miraculously, by hiding in the ruins, scavenging for food and eventually being helped by a brave and humane Wehrmacht officer called William Hozenfeld, he survived. This moving memoir was published in Polish in 1946 but suppressed, presumably because Hozenfeld, who saved many Jews, perished in a punishment camp in Stalingrad. A thought-provoking bit of history that illustrates the power of the human spirit to triumph over evil. (Kirkus UK)