The pianist

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 in the immediate aftermath of the war, The Pianist conveys a shattering immediacy found in few books about that time and stands as a stunning testament to human endurance and healing through compassion.