<div>Named one of the Best Books of 1999 by the <i>Los Angeles Times</i>, <i>The Pianist </i>is now a major motion picture directed by Roman Polanski and starring Adrien Brody (<i>Son of Sam</i>). <i>The Pianist</i> won the Cannes Film Festival's most prestigious prize—the Palme d'Or.<br><br>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.<br><br>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, <i>The Pianist </i>is a stunning testament to human endurance and the redemptive power of fellow feeling.<br></div>