A review by karolinatx
Pianista: Warszawskie wspomnienia 1939-1945 by Władysław Szpilman

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.