The Pianist

This is a vivid and gripping true account of how a brilliant Polish Jewish pianist survived by a fluke the Nazi mass-murder of Warsaw’s Jews in which his parents and three siblings died. The author hid in the ruins of Warsaw through two winters without heating and eating only scraps of food he managed to scavenge. Near death, he was, almost unbelievably, found and helped by a German SS officer who had heard him playing a battered piano.

The book shows humanity at both its worst and its best. The film by Roman Polanski is brilliant, but this memoir is… show more.

Yes! We all saw the movie, but did you know that it began as a memoir written by Szpilman to document his life during WWII? If you didn’t, pick up this book. You will be there, by Szpilman’s side as he fights for survival, and his first-person narrative allows us to see the ghetto and Poland through his eyes. 

Wladyslaw Szpilman, who survived in the ruins of Warsaw after his parents and siblings had been sent to an extermination camp. A wonderful account of how so many people joined together to save the life of one Jew, even though the punishment for such actions was instant death. It’s a long time since I read it and I suspect my memory is clouded by the film. Most Jewish survival books are written years after the events, Szpilman wrote this immediately after the war and so it contains the passion and grief, and guilt of a survivor. A memorable book.

It’s fair to say that I could not put this book down. I read it in one sitting and when I had to get up and walk around, I took it with me, reading as I went. The movie was brilliant, but hard as it is to believe, the book was even better. It is a major tribute to human endurance, of forgiveness, and the redemptive power of beautiful music.

Apart from being a page-turner, I believe that it’s a very fine work that for ethical and moral reasons should be read and remembered. The strength it took him to… show more.