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The Pianist
- Narrated by: Laurence Dobiesz
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, Entertainment & Celebrities
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Award-winning writer and filmmaker Laurence Rees has spent nearly 20 years meeting people who were tested to the extreme during World War II. He has come face to face with rapists, mass murderers, even cannibals, but he has also met courageous individuals who are an inspiration to us all. His quest has taken him from the Baltic States to Japan, from Poland to America and from Germany to China.
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Laurence Rees, in his magnum opus, combines largely unpublished testimony with the latest academic research to create the first accessible and authoritative account of the Holocaust in over three decades. Rees argues that whilst hatred of the Jews was always at the epicentre of Nazi thinking - and the Holocaust was the most appalling crime in history - what happened cannot be fully understood without considering the murder of the Jews alongside other Nazi plans to kill millions of non-Jews as well.
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Astonishing Piece Of Work
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Summary
The best-selling memoir of a Jewish pianist who survived the war in Warsaw against all odds.
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 immediately after the war and suppressed for decades, The Pianist is a stunning testament to human endurance and the redemptive power of fellow feeling.
Read by Laurence Dobiesz.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
Critic reviews
"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...riveting." (Observer)
"The images drawn are unusually sharp and clear...but its moral tone is even more striking: Szpilman refuses to make a hero or a demon out of anyone." (Literary Review)
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What listeners say about The Pianist
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Overall
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- Anonymous User
- 30-08-19
Tragic and timeless
An unbelievable story of survival in the toughest of times. Please listen to this. Unforgettable.