The Pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman

After watching the Roman Polanski film last year I felt compelled to read the book on which it was based. I did so in one sitting, and it’s one of those rarest of things: a book and film that compliment each other well. You might expect anger; you might expect bitterness, but Szpilman delivers a controlled yet unflinching vision of daily life in the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi occupation as well as his own incredible story of survival-against-the-odds. Like many tales of the Second World War, this is compelling, humbling, haunting stuff...read it.