I bought this book at a used book store because dust jacket art caught my eye and it was a first edition. It sat on my shelf for several years until I moved. While I was unpacking I procrastinated by opening it up and flipping to the photo section. Then I sat down and started reading. I read it from cover to cover. Thomas Keirnan is an engaging author and his subject matter is facinating. The chapters alternate between Polanski's biography starting with his childhood in a Nazi occupied Polish ghetto and the suspenseful development of the child rape charges against him during the 1970's. The cinematic 'parallel editing' style makes reading this book like watching a movie. Anyone who enjoyed Tess, The Pianist or any other Polanski film will love this book. Several scenes from The Pianist echo moments from Polanski's tragic childhood. While I abhor the crimes he easily admitted to, this book reveals the development of both his creative genius and his justifications for his criminal actions. The author knew Polanski and many of his famous friends. His insider's view is deliciously intimate.

Roman, by Roman Polanski is a very good book. It is very touching about his memories of his late wife, Sharon Tate and their short life together. Roman lost his wife and unborn child in 1969 by the Manson Group. He had a very hard life in Poland during WWII. He lost both his parents during that time, but he grew up to be a world famous director. The book tells about his struggles during these times, and also during the period after the deaths of his wife and child. He tells about his Hollywood days of directing, his famous friends, famous people and then what turned out to be his downfall...with the teenaged girl acusing him of sexual contact and him being arrested. To avoid persecution, Roman left the United States and has been in exile in France ever since, but still directs and has released more movies. But, the book is very well told, and gives a good insite on Roman's life and his career.

There are so many true crime books written and none of them come close as this touching and shocking account from the great director Roman Polanski. Everyone knows about the murder of his wife but not so many know how it truly affects someone. The section that got me the most was Roman discussing how much he misses Sharon whenever he packs a suitcase (she loved to pack). No matter how much we like to hear gory details about something like that case we never get to hear how it takes it's toll on loved ones. Maybe if we heard more accounts like this, this country wouldn't obsess and make a hero out of Manson and his freaks of a "family"!

This is a must for fans of the great director! This was written by him in 1984 as a memorial to his late wife Sharon Tate and to help get him out of the trouble he was embroiled in at the time....

From the inside flap of the dustjacket:

Includes 59 never previously published photographs of personal memorabilia and cinematic works from Roman Polanski's collection.

Cinematic genius- international playboy- tragic victim- immoralist. Which is the real Roman Polanski?

The world press has called him this and more. Now , for the first time, and "to set the record straight" , the brilliant director of such films as Knife in the Water, Repulsion, Cul de Sac, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown and Tess tells his own Roman, his own story revealing- in fascinating detail that only he could ever know- the mosaic of his life.Excusing nothing, being brutally honest about his transgressions from convention, Polanski deals with everything here, giving us remarkable insight into the schemes and intrigues that lie in wait for anyone living in the high-powered world in which he does.

Among the many doors that are locked for us are those that lead back to his frightening buy not joyless childhood in Nazi- occupied Poland, both inside the ghetto and on the run; to Lodz film school in the fifties, where he worked and played with equal intensity, to Paris and his early struggles to become established as a director, to London and Hollywood in the "swinging " sixties, where he first won international acclaim. We follow him through his marriages, his love affairs, his freindships with people as diverse as hisown wide ranging intersts- filmamkers, artists, talented celebrities, bizarre unknowns. With him we experience the full force of the tragedy that struck his wife Sharon Tate who was murdered by the Manson "family" , his years of disenchantment and self -inquiry;his arrest and imprisonment in California on charges alleging the rape of a minor;his personal and professional resurgence in France.

Roman Polanski is an artist of our time. Politically , technologically, socially, his story has a resonance that leaps from the page, is a journey in mid-flight with locations in Warsaw, Hollywood, Paris, London , Rome, anyplace his obsession with film brought him. Inevitably, his odyssey includes encounters with the gods of our time- the great movie stars- as well as accounts of his personal achievements and despair, his reaction to the great praise that greeted him, and to the equally great calumny that he has suffered.

In Roman, Polanski never shrinks from revealing himself , and allows us to discover the vital artist and hte real person behind the brutal headlines and supermarket scribblings. What we discover it the human being;what we come to understand is the man himself.And how,exactly, life happened to Roman Polanski.

The myriad and often contradictory superlatives that define Roman Polanski are evident in his 1984 autobiography. A man of immense dichotomy: by turns exquisitely sensitive and dazzlingly brilliant yet capable of staggering insensitivity and cruelty; a singularly gifted filmmaker who has sometimes betrayed that talent completely; a man blessed with the reciprocal love and devotion of three of the world's most beautiful women (most notably Sharon Tate) and yet easily capable of sexist and loutish behavior, etc. The parade of paradoxes attendant to Polanski's life make for fascinating reading, evoke extremes of admiration and disdain on the part of the reader, and ultimately remind us that the author, like life itself, is not easily defined nor pigeonholed by a pool of platitudes.

As this tome lacks the direct input of anyone other than Polanski himself, much of the director's foibles and missteps are congealed in the inevitable patina of celebrity and privilege. But that's not the whole story - by far. Polanski's appalling childhood and the Manson murders of 1969 (Polanski's pregnant wife and unborn child were murdered by disciples of the would-be messiah) undoubtedly contributed to the self-destruction that is too frequently an underlying theme in his life.

The passages in which the author pays noble tribute to Tate provide a touching - and fitting - legacy to the lovely actress whose abundant goodness - her superior heart and her abiding selflessness - are manifest in Polanski's memories. It is, ultimately, this aspect of the book that remain in the reader's memory - long after the last page has been turned. In Polanski's relationship with his late wife - we are allowed to observe the director's vulnerability, tenderness and love - qualities that are all too frequently sublimated in his own overweening arrogance, pride and machismo.

"Roman by Polanski" is a satisfying and compelling read for those of us who, though incensed by some of the director's sophomoric actions, still find a commonality with the chaotic and passionate aspects of his personality. For this reason, the loss of his filmmaking genius in America is very unfortunate indeed.

Polanski has led one of the most interesting lives of anyone in the film industry, and it was great to read about his many misadventures, misfortunes, and mistakes, as viewed from the director's perspective. I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes the Polanski's films or has been intrigued by his sensationalized history.

I got my hands on a copy because I wanted to see if it really was written by Polanski, and I'm still unsure: no one else's name appears on the cover, but would Polanski really take the time to adapt his film to the novella form, or did he just hire a ghost writer? My advice to Polanski fans: see the movie, skip the book. It's almost a word-for-word adaptation of the film (written, surprisingly enough, in the present tense). The film makes for an interesting (if somewhat misogynist) experience . . . but reading the story without benefit of the imagery or pacing of the film proves to be rather dull.