NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM FOCUS FEATURES

On September 23, 1939, the great Polish classical pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman played a Chopin nocturne live on the radio, but the shells blasting at a nearby window were so loud he could not hear his piano. Germany was invading Warsaw, and German occupation of this city meant that unanswerable murder and unspeakable cruelty would soon be daily, inescapable realities. But sometimes a person can escape the inescapable: The Pianist offers the amazing, often shocking true story of Szpilman's survival amid the rampant inhumanity of the Holocaust.

Although the nightmarish experiences of the Jewish ghetto claimed the lives of all of his immediate relatives and many of his friends, Szpilman himself--as depicted in this moving, profoundly important memoir--lived through the war by way of careful hiding, selfless bravery, and incredible fortune. Indeed, his ability at the keyboard actually proved indispensable to his survival--as did the surprising benevolence and compassion of a certain German officer who, near the end of the war, heard Szpilman play the same Chopin nocturne he had been performing when German artillery first exploded throughout Warsaw.

This well-written autobiography reveals the triumph of the soul, the flourishing of the artistic sensibility, even in the face of the most hellish circumstances. The Pianist, Roman Polanski's recent film based on this book, won the highest honor at the Cannes Film Festival and has been nominated for seven Academy Awards.