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Władysław Szpilman

Pianist, The Paperback – Sept. 2 2000

by Wladyslaw Szpilman (Author)

4.7 2,450 ratings

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The memoir that inspired Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning film, which won the Cannes Film Festival's most prestigious prize―the Palme d'Or.

Named one of the Best Books of 1999 by the Los Angeles Times

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.

Print length

224 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Picador Paper
Publication date

Sept. 2 2000
Dimensions

14.35 x 1.7 x 20.98 cm
ISBN-10

0312263767
ISBN-13

978-0312263768
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Thomas Keneally
3,224
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Jennifer A. Nielsen
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Product description

Review

“Stunning . . . Filled with unforgettable incidents, images, and people.” ―The Wall Street Journal

“Remarkable . . . a document of lasting historical and human value.” ―The Los Angeles Times

“Historically indispensible.” ―Washington Post Book World

“The Pianist is a great book.” ―The Boston Globe

“Even by the standards set be Holocaust memoirs, this book is a stunner.” ―Seattle Weekly

“A stunning tribute to what one human being can endure, The Pianist is even more--a testimony to the redemptive power of fellow feeling.” ―The Plain Dealer

“Distinguished by [Szpilman's] dazzling clarity . . . Remarkably lucid.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A striking Holocaust memoir that conveys with exceptional immediacy and cool reportage the author's desperate fight for survival.” ―Kirkus Reviews

“The Pianist is a book so fresh and vivid, so heartbreaking, and so simply and beautifully written, that it manages to tell us the story of horrendous events as if for the first time . . . an altogether unforgettable book. ” ―The Daily Telegraph

“Wladyslaw Szpilman's memoir of life in Nazi-occupied Warsaw and the Jewish ghetto has a singular vividness. All is conveyed with an understated intimacy and dailiness that render them painfully close.” ―The Observer

“It is all told with a simple clarity that lodges the story in one's stomach through a mixture of disgust, terror, despair, rage, and guilt that grips the reader almost gently. ” ―The Spectator

“Illuminates vividly the horror that overcame the Polish people. Szpilman's account has an immediacy, vivid and anguished.” ―The Sunday Telegraph

About the Author

Wladyslaw Szpilman was born in 1911. He studied the piano at the Warsaw Conservatory and at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. From 1945 to 1963, he was Director of Music at Polish Radio, and he also pursued a career as a concert pianist and composer for many years. He died in Warsaw in 2000. The film version of his memoir, The Pianist, was the winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador Paper (Sept. 2 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0312263767
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312263768
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 204 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.35 x 1.7 x 20.98 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #215,572 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #349 in Jewish Biographies

Customer Reviews:
4.7 2,450 ratings

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Mar

it is easy to travel

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on February 9, 2015

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Ok so where to start? This book is not sugarcoated, this book is not in any way poetic or overemotional.
It's deliciously real, Wladyslaw brings you inside hell and out with him, nothing artificial added to the trip, just him, telling about his life, with some detachment but a flawless logic.
The thing is that when a book is so simple, it is easy to travel, you will be in Warsaw with him at the time instantaneously.
I have read some holocaust books, they all have this guilty and painful nature, but in this one everything feels so crude and simple, there is a difference to it, because he wrote it just after the war had ended, not decades later.
So you get to see human nature, a courageous man that even in the worse of the cases was thankful for the many simple things life had to offer, not a hero, not a character, a human being that when is confronted to the worst finds no other than to deal with it, with an uttermost discipline and faith in his own sixth sense. It was really a treat, I recommend it plainly

One person found this helpful

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Craig Jenkins

Live the terrible adventure, and learn from it, so that we may all be better

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 19, 2016

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As probably one of the few who has never seen the movie, I was a little embarassed to be so late to the party to read The Pianist. It's a remarkable book on its own - the tale is so profound, the characters so lifelike (which may seem foolish to say given that it is non- fiction, but that they are so relatable is key to the impact this book has on us). I really felt as though I lived the entire terrible adventure.

On a secondary note, this remarkable story is one of millions lost, and could have easily been lost to us. It's an incredible example of the need to remember and learn from our history, and to be as horrifically frank as possible in our recounting.

2 people found this helpful

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J. E. Michel Brazeau

Maybe it was the translator but it wasn't as good as the movie was

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on December 8, 2016

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I wanted to read the book after having seen the movie. Maybe it was the translator but it wasn't as good as the movie was.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on May 29, 2013

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This is one of those WW2 books that should be read by everyone to gain an appreciation for the lives that we all live today. It is a sad, gripping, and completely unbelievable true story written about the Jews living in a Polish ghetto. How the main character in the book managed to survive these happenings is amazing. A must-read.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 31, 2021

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A Good read. Graphic desciptions. BUT, one of the few times where I feel the movie is better than the book.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on May 6, 2016

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excellent livre

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 28, 2019

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I was dissappointed I must say as it received almost five stars. It probably was a true story but didnt hold my interest

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 20, 2004

That's all one can say about this book. So much tragedy is packed into so little space but what's in those 187 pages will make you rethink about the little things in life we take for granted so much nowadays.
I always roll my eyes whenever I hear someone in a restaurant complain about their food or ask that a dish be prepared in a specific way (as if they're the king or queen of the universe). At those times I always think of Europeans during World War II who had next to nothing and had to ration it to make it last for weeks. With Mr. Szpilman's vivid descriptions of his drinking water that had bugs in it and foam at the top (loaded with bacteria) and drinking it as if it came straight from a well, I will have to really restrain myself in the future from telling people where to go when they have so much.
One thing that befuddled me was the notion that the Soviets were some kind of saviors, that they were better than the Germans (even Captain Wilm Hosenfeld, in his diary entries at the end of the book, bought into this when he stated that not even in the cellars of the Russian secret police was there a more efficient way of murdering people than the crematoriums near Lublin). Not for nothing but more people died in Russia under Joseph Stalin than in Germany or Poland and Stalin's murderous ways made Hitler look like a choirboy. The Russians could have cared less about Poland.
While reading this book, I also couldn't help but going back through conversations with people who rave about how the war years were so great. I also get a kick out of the folks still around who sniff at the rest of us that THEY know what freedom is all about.
Americans went through nothing during the Second World War. While people here were fox-trotting and jitterbugging and the women were flirting with servicemen at the local dance hall, European Jews were being crammed into cattle trucks saturated with chlorine (the scene from Roman Polanski's movie version of the book left a lasting impression with me), people were being shot on the streets of Poland, Germany, and everywhere else in Europe for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Ask European Jews if 1939-1945 were the best years of their lives.
Personally, I don't know how Mr. Szpilman came out of the war with his mind intact. His love of music got him through it all and saved his life in the end. Most amazing of all, he didn't turn out to be a bitter man.
I hope Mr. Szpilman and Captain Wilm Hosenfeld are friends on the Other Side and I also hope to see Hosenfeld honored as a Righteous Gentile someday.
Speaking of Captain Hosenfeld, he turned out to be a visionary and was right on the money in so many ways. Too bad he was on the wrong side of things (and sorry to see he met the death he did at the hands of the Russians. Hitler got nothing next to him).
After reading this powerful book, I am thoroughly convinced that people my age (late 20's) don't know what it's like to struggle nor do we know the meaning of true survival.

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Cleiton Cabral dos Santos

Emocionante

Reviewed in Brazil 🇧🇷 on December 2, 2021

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Já li diversos livros de sobreviventes do Holocausto, mas este é sem dúvida um dos mais tocantes. Em muitos dos outros livros que li, existe aquele ódio pelos alemães, mas neste é simplesmente um relato preciso de uma pessoa que simplesmente não acredita que o ser humano pode ser capaz de cometer tamanhas atrocidades. A partir de hoje, não tem como ouvir Nocturne in C minor de Chopin sem que lembremos da cena mais impactante do livro, o seu encontro com o oficial alemão no fim da guerra.

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ah

Yep

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on December 20, 2022

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I like the pictures in the middle, I didn’t read it cause it’s present but it looked good and in good condition

Richelmy Magi

Livro sensacional.

Reviewed in Brazil 🇧🇷 on June 20, 2021

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Sou suspeito para falar desse livro. Sou fã do Szpilman, assim como de sua história. Mesmo assistindo mais de 22 vezes o filme, vendo todo o tipo de conteúdo na internet, o livro traz detalhes novos e que deixam a sua história ainda mais contagiante.

O texto em inglês não é o mais fácil de ser entendido, mas você consegue absorver 95% das passagens e com um dicionário na mão, fica perfeito.

Por fim, leiam. Vale a pena.

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Janet Salinas

A very enthralling and touching novel about the terrible lives of Jews in World War 2WE MUST NEVER FORGET the unbelievable atrocities that the Jewish people endured

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on November 6, 2020

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A very poignant story about the almost unbelievable atrocities that the Jewish people endured during World War 2. LEST we Forget!

Débora Bigio

A moving story about the holocaust

Reviewed in Brazil 🇧🇷 on August 8, 2018

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Very personal and moving story. Survival in a very hostile world and still keep his dignity. Szpilman transmits his survival story and tells us his story with simplicity and recognized the help of people without whom he would have never survived. A page turner.

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Pianist, The Paperback – Sept. 2 2000

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