The Pianist

The powerful and bestselling memoir that inspired the Oscar and BAFTA-winning film.

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 timeDaily Telegraph

First published in 1946, The Pianist is the unforgettable memoir of a young Polish-Jewish pianist who survived the Second World War against all odds. This is a book that takes us as close as we are ever likely to travel to the day-to-day reality of living through terror (Sunday Times), an indelible reminder of the horrors of war and the astonishing endurance of the human spirit.

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 encyclopaediaIndependent 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 - rivetingObserver

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 timeDaily Telegraph