The Siege: From the bestselling author of A Spell of Winter

Helen Dunmore

May 2002 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF INSIDE THE WAVE AND A SPELL OF WINTER

Leningrad, September 1941. Hitler orders the German forces to surround the city at the start of the most dangerous, desperate winter in its history. For two pairs of lovers - Anna and Andrei, Anna's novelist father and banned actress Marina - the siege becomes a battle for survival.

They will soon discover what it is like to be so hungry you boil shoe leather to make soup, so cold you burn furniture and books. But this is not just a struggle to exist, it is also a fight to keep the spark of hope alive . . .

The Siege is a brilliantly imagined novel of war and the wounds it inflicts on ordinary people's lives, and a profoundly moving celebration of love, life and survival.

***

'Remarkable, affecting . . . there are few more interesting stories than this; and few writers who could have told it better' Rachel Cusk, Daily Telegraph

'Literary writing of the highest order set against a background if suffering so intimately reconstructed it is hard to believe that Dunmore was not there' Richard Overy, Sunday Telegraph

'Utterly convincing. A deeply moving account of two love stories in terrible circumstances. The story of their struggle to survive appears simple, as all great literature should . . . a world-class novel' Antony Beevor, The Times

Ratings and reviews

Superb

About the author

Helen Dunmore has published six novels with Viking and Penguin: ZENNOR IN DARKNESS, which won the McKitterick Prize; BURNING BRIGHT; A SPELL OF WINTER, which won the Orange Prize; TALKING TO DEAD; YOUR BLUE-EYED BOY; and WITH YOUR HEART CROOKED HEART. She is also a poet, children's novelist and short-story writer; her two collections of short stories, LOVE OF FAT MEN and ICE CREAM, are also published by Viking and Penguin. She lives in Bristol.