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Title details for The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman - Wait list

The Pianist

by Wladyslaw Szpilman
Andrzej Szpilman
ebook
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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
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Publisher: Picador

Kindle Book

  • Release date: June 4, 2024

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9781466837621
  • Release date: June 4, 2024

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9781466837621
  • File size: 2122 KB
  • Release date: June 4, 2024
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Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

subjects

Biography & Autobiography History Judaica Nonfiction

Languages

English

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
Expand title description text
Biography & Autobiography History Judaica Nonfiction