The Pianist
5. The Pianist - Władysław Szpilman, 1946 (first-time reading)
One of my friends gave me this for my birthday (I asked her for it, after renting the film, liking it, and being intensely irritated when halfway through the DVD suddenly refused to cooperate and I didn't get to see the end) and I enjoyed it very much. The film, as far as I could judge from the first half, was such a personal story - Szpilman's story - but the book seemed to me much better suited by its original title, Death of a City. My overall impression was not that it was describing the miraculous survival of a single man, but that it was tracing Warsaw through the occupation. It's a wonderful book that gives such a vivid picture of a fascinating place and time, and what I took from it was really the story of the city and of its Jewish community more than of the pianist.
One of my friends gave me this for my birthday (I asked her for it, after renting the film, liking it, and being intensely irritated when halfway through the DVD suddenly refused to cooperate and I didn't get to see the end) and I enjoyed it very much. The film, as far as I could judge from the first half, was such a personal story - Szpilman's story - but the book seemed to me much better suited by its original title, Death of a City. My overall impression was not that it was describing the miraculous survival of a single man, but that it was tracing Warsaw through the occupation. It's a wonderful book that gives such a vivid picture of a fascinating place and time, and what I took from it was really the story of the city and of its Jewish community more than of the pianist.