Product Description

Leningrad, September 1941. German tanks surround the city, imprisoning those who live there. The besieged people of Leningrad face shells, starvation, and the Russian winter. Interweaving two love affairs in two generations, THE SIEGE draws us deep into the Levin's family struggle to stay alive during this terrible winter. It is a story about war and the wounds it inflicts on people's lives. It is also a lyrical and deeply moving celebration of love, life and survival.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47929 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The final words of Helen Dunmore's The Siege--"No, I shall not wholly die..."(Alexander Pushkin)--respond to the stark threat with which the novel begins: "Re: The future of Leningrad ... The Führer has decided to have Leningrad wiped from the face of the earth". In this powerful work of fiction, Dunmore writes through her fascination with one of the most remarkable, and painful, episodes in Russian history: the siege of Leningrad through the winter of 1941 during which untold thousands perished of cold and starvation.

The Siege is a type of memorial, a literary document to an experience in which, as Dunmore writes, "being dead is normal". People die in the streets, in their beds; whole families are frozen, "bodies piled up by the Karpovka canal, or outside the cemeteries". What does it take to survive? Dunmore explores that question through the powerful characters--Anna Levin, Kolya (her child-brother) and Andrei (her lover)--who people this novel, conjuring the contest with death that becomes the daily existence of the Leningraders, their belief in a world beyond the siege. The Siege is itself part of that world, stricken by memory and the question of what it means for a novel (and a novelist) to take on the "flesh of all those other Leningraders who died of hunger in silent, frigid rooms". This is part of the wager, and accomplishment, of Dunmore's extraordinary book and confirmation of the extraordinary skill and sensitivity, of her writing. --Vicky Lebeau

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.

Customer Reviews

Great Book - Read it!
This is a wonderful, unput-downable book - a love story in many senses but, ultimately it's the story of the city of Leningrad in the grip of winter and of starvation - it's a story of survival. Some of the other reviewers have complained that Dunmore doesn't go deep enough into the characters, that they are not fully developed, but I think that is intentional. When every day is a struggle just to live, there is no energy left for emotions and I think the author's sometimes 'matter of fact' prose reflects that very well. (And it still made me cry!!)
I was so absorbed by this book that I felt guilty for eating while I was reading it and when I left the house one night I fully expected there to be snow on the streets...

An excellent, unsensationalist study of the brutality of war
This book takes a relatively short period of the siege of Leningrad and carefully documents its effects on the lives of a Russian family. The descriptions of the city and its surrounding countryside are wonderfully evocative, capturing both the beauty pre-war and the terrible destruction that first the Germans, and then the winter and starvation, bring to Leningrad. If I have to make a criticism it would be that the snapshot of the siege ends after it is only a third completed, although it is implied that the worst is over. The next 2 years were also very, very hard and expensive in terms of lives lost. But this remains a study of humanity in the midst of brutality.

Heart wrenching!
What a beautifully written book this is. It was a treat from start to finish. Although the subject matter is necessarily bleak, the triumph over adversity scenario has never been so terrifyingly real.

Anna, a young woman, her 5 year old brother and her father are trying to survive the Seige of Leningrad in temperatures most of us cannot even imagine, and are unlikely to experience. The Germans are trying to starve the city to death and are succeeding. There is no food. Every step and every expenditure of energy has to be carefully thought out. Every nerve and every fibre of Anna's being are programmed to survive against all odds. Her will to live and keep her brother alive is so strong. The writing makes you feel as if you are there in the apartment with them, so much so that I wept when they found a jar of jam that had been hidden!

This book makes you think about human nature to survive against all odds. A very emotional read, which gave me an insight to a part of WW2 that I hadn't read much about.

Brilliant.