Reviews
The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939–45, by Władysław Szpilman
dharaiter's review
5.0
I read the book after watching the movie, because The Pianist is among my top three favorite movies.
Needless to say, the book was equally haunting. Although the movie was impeccable, Szpilman's words in the book touched me more than his character in the movie, which is a big deal.
The book is a cold reminder of Nazi atrocities and everyone should read it once in their life.
Needless to say, the book was equally haunting. Although the movie was impeccable, Szpilman's words in the book touched me more than his character in the movie, which is a big deal.
The book is a cold reminder of Nazi atrocities and everyone should read it once in their life.
kath61's review
5.0
Desperately sad yet also positive in that it tells the strength of the human spirit amidst unbelievable suffering. There is a very interesting extra section that makes this more than just a holocaust memoir. The book is very well crafted and reads well in translation.
whitecat5000's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
This was as heartbreaking as it was fascinating.
yvo_about_books's review against another edition
5.0
Finished reading: March 12th 2014
“And now I was lonelier, I supposed, than anyone else in the world. Even Defoe's creation, Robinson Crusoe, the prototype of the ideal solitary, could hope to meet another human being. Crusoe cheered himself by thinking that such a thing could happen any day, and it kept him going. But if any of the people now around me came near I would need to run for it and hide in mortal terror. I had to be alone, entirely alone, if I wanted to live.”
Spoiler
How to rate a book that contains such a tragic and above all true story of a man who survived the Holocaust against all odds? A story about a Jewish pianist who unsuccesfully tried to save his family, resisted the Nazi's and managed to stay alive under impossible conditions during the Second World War... It is incredible how a human being is capable of dealing with such an amount of physical and mental torture, and I have great respect for both Wladyslaw Szpilman and all other victims of the Holocaust. What makes his story even more special is that it was written right after the war in 1946, while other works appeared only many years after. Not long after Szpilman published his story, the Polish government tried to 'hide' the evidence of the terrible facts and his story wasn't republished until the nineties. If you haven't read The Pianist yet, I suggest you do. It gives you a great impression on how it was like for the Jews during the Second World War.
Wladyslaw Szpilman is a gifted pianist who plays for the Polish radio and he is known by many. He is also a Jew and forced to live in the ghetto with his family when the Germans take over Warsaw. Szpilman shows us the deteriorating situation within the ghetto. The people are living under the mercy of the German soldiers, who appear not to have any of that mercy left and kill people at random. The situation becomes more violent every day and soon transports to supposedly work camps are to be taken place. But in fact they are transports to the infamous gas chambers, and Szpilman wasn't able to save his family from that same horrendous fate.
Being a populair pianist he was able to save himself though. He escaped and with the help of various faithful friends he hid successfully from the Germans. He had to change his hiding place various times, and it seemed that his intuition saved his life more than once. Being on the border of death, Szpilman actually tried to commit suicide once with the reason that he prefered taking strong sleeping pills over falling into the hands of the Germans. But fortunately for him the pills weren't strong enough to kill him, even though his body was weak from the lack of food and the terrible situation he was in for so long already. He managed to escape yet again and found another place to hide. In that last hiding place is where two unlikely people met, a person who would save Szpilman's life for a last time before the war was over. A German officer named Wilm Hosenfeld discovered him at the house Szpilman was hiding, but decided to save his life and even provided him with food and prevented him freezing to death.
Pieces of Wilm's journal are included into the memoir of the pianist, and show us a different angle of the German officers. Hosenfeld doesn't approve with the situation at all, but isn't able to do anything about it by himself. He did save various Jews from their terrible fate though, and Szpilman was one of them. Unfortunately the Soviets caught Hosenfeld towards the end of the war and still imprisoned he died a few years later. Szpilman tried to get him free, but was never able to locate the man that helped him survive...
The Pianist is a very strong read and without doubt recommended to those who are interested in the Second World War and Jewish memoirs. Szpilman's story is both heartbreaking and mindblowing, and one of my favorite reads this year. Don't forget to watch the movie version directed by Roman Polanski if you haven't; it is just as powerful as the novel!
P.S. Find more of my reviews here.
bemysea's review against another edition
dark
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: War, Violence, Dysphoria, Suicidal thoughts, Deportation, Antisemitism, Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Racial slurs, and Police brutality
karolinatx's review against another edition
4.0
I read The Pianist in the original Polish, but the book will read well in any language. As Szpilman's son writes in the preface to the book, his father was not a writer, and the memoir is a testament to that fact. There is no overly flowerly language, no planned-out metaphors. The Pianist is simply a factual account of the mirculous events which lead to Wladyslaw Szpilman surviving first the Warsaw ghetto and later hiding out in Warsaw for years until the war ended. I learned quite a bit about life in the ghetto by reading the book, and found it interesting that Szpilman did not write with rage or hatred towards those who made his life a living hell for so many years. The memoir is, in a way, an exercise in fate -- there were so many opportunities when Szpilman could have died, could have been discovered, could have been sent to Treblinka, that it seems that his survival was written in the stars. The Pianist is a short memoir, a quick read, and very much recommended to anyone who is interested in the Holocaust or World War II. Roman Polanski was just in Poland shooting the movie version, and I'm interested to see how that turns out.
marinazala's review against another edition
4.0
** Books 128 - 2015 **
This books to accomplish New Author Reading Challenge 2015
4 of 5 breaking stars!
Baik Buku dan Filmnya sama-sama sedihnya. >__<
This books to accomplish New Author Reading Challenge 2015
4 of 5 breaking stars!
Baik Buku dan Filmnya sama-sama sedihnya. >__<
jmiae's review
3.0
In great contrast to the book I read before this one, I sped through the pages of Szpilman's story within the span of three days. It is an incredible and terrible experience to read about, one that made me keener to finish it quickly rather than linger over so many horrors for a week or more. But Szpilman's writing lends itself to quick reading. He's very matter-of-fact, if that's the right term, even when he is describing his despair at being separated from his family, and those frightful weeks when he was starving. The epilogue discusses those qualities in more detail and far more eloquently than I can. So let me just say that it was a privilege to read his story, and having watched Roman Polanski's film based on this book did not take away anything from it. If anything, being able to hear the (translated) first-hand account, written almost immediately after the war had ended, was more mentally impactful than emotionally so, whereas the film does guard its audience the same coolness with which Szpilman's writing is armoured. But I don't want this to be a comparison between the book and its film adaptation. In the end, Szpilman's story is an incredible one, and it offers an invaluable depiction and understanding of humanity in one of the worst periods of European history.