The Siege
Book description
Called "elegantly, starkly beautiful" by The New York Times Book Review, The Siege is Helen Dunmore's masterpiece. Her canvas is monumental -- the Nazis' 1941 winter siege on Leningrad that killed six hundred thousand -- but her focus is heartrendingly intimate. One family, the Levins, fights to stay alive in…
Why read it?
2 authors picked The Siege as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
When I teach creative writing, I often use this excellent historical novel set in the USSR during WW2 as an example. There are scenes from this book seared into my memory—they are so powerful, visceral, and moving.. Helen Dunmore is able to put the reader in the centre of the most harrowing circumstances, where people are starving, freezing, and dying in the thousands, and yet allow us to care about the individual and feel uplifted by their struggle. In Leningrad, Anna has already lost her mother, who died giving birth to her baby brother, Kolya. During the brutal siege of…
From Kate's list on young women in big trouble.
This novel about the siege of Leningrad taught me how it is possible to make readers care deeply about huge historical events, by keeping a close focus on one family, and one young woman in particular. This is Helen Dunmore's masterpiece: in storytelling terms, in characterisation, and in placing these people against the ghastly backdrop of Leningrad in 1941, when Hitler's troops surrounded it and tried to starve the city into surrender. The book is based on meticulous research, but the facts are so deeply embedded that they become part of the wallpaper, leaving the reader to powerfully experience the…
From Maggie's list on women's historical fiction.
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