The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-45

Author：Wladyslaw Szpilman

Paperback: 224 pages

Publisher: W&N ; New Ed edition ( 2002-12-31 )

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0753814056

ISBN-13: 978-0753814055

Product Dimensions: 13 x 1.8 x 19.6 cm

内容简介

The powerful and bestselling memoir of a young Jewish pianist who survived the war in Warsaw against all odds. Made into a Bafta and Oscar-winning film.

'You can learn more about human nature from this brief account of the survival of one man throughout the war years in the devastated city of Warsaw than from several volumes of the average encyclopaedia' Independent on Sunday

'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

'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

Vivid and anguished . . . compulsive reading (Richard Overy Sunday Telegraph)

You can learn more about human nature from this brief account of the survival of one man throughout the war years in the devastated city of Warsaw than from several volumes of the average encyclopaedia (Gerald Jacobs Independent on Sunday)

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 (Lisa Appignanesi Observer)

This memoir of a Jewish pianist who survived the war in Warsaw is one of the most powerful accounts ever written (Sunday Tribune)

A compelling, harrowing masterpiece (Independent)

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 . . . His account is hair-raising, beyond anything Hollywood could invent . . . Everything that has been most horrific in life in 20th-century Europe is encompassed in this exquisite memoir (Daily Telegraph)

What really stays with the reader is the chilling, almost naive immediacy with which the story is told . . . The Pianist is an icy, nerveless but remarkably readable memoir that takes us as close as we are ever likely to travel to the day-to-day reality of living through terror (Sunday Times)

Book Des cription

The powerful and bestselling memoir of a young Jewish pianist who survived the war in Warsaw against all odds. Made into a Bafta and Oscar-winning film.

From the Publisher

From the reviews of THE PIANIST:

"The grand historical narrative of the Second World War, with its alliances and troop movements, its capitalised heroes and villains, is now largely established. Yet 54 years on, the smaller, individual accounts of those who lived through the war's terror continue to shock or surprise by their very particularity. Wladyslaw Spzpilman's memoir of life in Nazi-occupied Warsaw and the Jewish ghetto has a singular vividness. It was written and published immediately after the war, only then to be buried by the new Communist regime....the immediacy of Szpilman's account goes hand in hand with a rare tone of innocence. History has not yet been written, certainly not digested. We are drawn in to share his surprise and then disbelief at the horrifying progress of events. His shock and ensuing numbness become ours, so that acts of ordinary kindness take on an aura of miracle." OBSERVER, 28/3/99

"You can learn more about human nature from this brief account of the survival of one man throughout the war years in the devastated city of Warsaw than from several volumes of the average encyclopaedia." INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY, 28/3/99

"For a Jew to survive the Warsaw ghetto was amazing. For a German officer to feel agonised and ashamed of his country and his countrymen as their cruelty and madness destroyed human beings as if they were mere physical objects, to record his shame in diaries kept throughout his service in Warsaw, diaries which miraculously survived being posted to his family in Germany via the regular mail in late 1944, is probably unique. Captain Wilm Hosenfeld, excerpts from whose diary form part of THE PIANIST, saved Wladyslaw Szpilman by giving him food, an eiderdown and an overcoat when death from cold and starvation cannot have been far off....Szpilman writes of the gradually rising terror created in Warsaw by the Germans...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, 5/3/99

"The images drawn are unusually sharp and clear, perhaps because this book was first written immediately after the war. But its moral tone is even more striking: Szpilman refuses to make a hero or a demon out of anyone." THE LITERARY REVIEW --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

作者简介

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 for many years he also pursued a career as a concert pianist and composer. He lived in Warsaw until his death in 2000.