The Pianist

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

Wladyslaw Szpilman

• Publisher: Picador
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9781466837621
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Biographies

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

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Notice
• Foreword to the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Edition by Andrzej Szpilman
• The Hour of the Children and the Mad
• War
• The First Germans
• My Father Bows to the Germans
• Are You Jews?
• Dancing in Chłodna Street
• A Fine Gesture by Mrs K
• An Anthill Under Threat
• The Umschlagplatz
• A 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 Wladyslaw Szpilman and Wilm Hosenfeld, by Wolf Biermann
• Praise for The Pianist
• About the Author
• Newsletter Sign-up
• Contents
• Copyright