Product Description

Irina Davydovna is a cleaner. She has no time for politics or even for that matter, people: 'rules and rulers may come and go, but dirt never changes.' Boris Aleksandrovich is a revolutionary. He thinks he understands power. But this is Leningrad in 1933 and Stalin is about to turn against their city. When the life of his beloved daughter Natasha is threatened and his old friend Anton saves a skinny little orphan he finds on a Moscow train, Boris' faith in his ideals are put to the test. While Irina, watching it all, must learn the power of loyalty and love. 'Powerful and moving, Ice Road is a novel whose epic scope never obscures the individual lives that are lived in the shadow of great events. I shall never forget Natasha and Kolya's love story ...or Irina, whose sturdy self respect and determination to survive, seems, at times, to speak for an entire people. Gillian Slovo excels in depicting complex human beings, full of passion, love, ambition, self- interest, who are caught up in their country's history and swept along by it.' Pat Barker

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #74753 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Review
'Gillian Slovo's Ice Road is the finest account you will read of Stalin's terrors and the unimaginable horror of the siege of Leningrad' John Humphrey, Mail on Sunday 'Magnificent...To tell the story is something; but Slovo understands from inside the characters' own heads' Guardian 'I grew to love Slovo's powerful narrator, the redoubtable cleaning lady Irina Davydovna ... Slovo has produced a novel which is demanding, brave and bold ... Many writers have used the brutal effects of the Seige of Leningrad to explore courage, betrayal and survival, but Slovo adds something important.' - Charlie Lee-Potter, Observer 'This is a novel that explores the motivation and consequences of political events on ordinary lives ... Ice Road brilliantly depicts, from the emotional inside, the most politically disastrous assassination in Russian history, the murder of Kirov ... Slovo achieves a depth of psychological realism through the minds of victim and assassin ... Enthralling and persuasive are Irina and Anya, the cleaner and the orphan ... along with Natasha, a Russian tragic heroine and the fine portrayal of Leonid Nikolaev ...' - Rachel Holmes, Times 'This is a beautifully composed, expertly structured and wonderfully evocative masterpiece - Gillian Slovo's greatest achievement to date' Daily Mail 'Slovo describes the death of an ideal with a passion that makes her book moving and memorable' Sunday Telegraph 'Rings absolutely true... a moving and perceptive epic of utopia in darkness' Independent 'Without doubt one of the best offerings of the year, Ice Road is a solid work that awakes emotions. Slovo's characters are so well- defined and differentiated that you could be forgiven for forgetting that Ice Road is fiction.' Evening Herald (Ire)

The Times
'Ice Road brilliantly depicts, from the emotional inside, the most politically disastrous assassination in Russian history . . . Enthralling'

The Guardian
'Magnificent... To tell the story is something; but Slovo understands from inside the characters' own heads' Guardian

Customer Reviews

Ice Road
This was a book that I could just not put down, and when I finished I wanted to start all over again... but I had to go to work. Gillian Slovo's book is a realistic novel about true events in Russia's history and whoever you are, it will make you shed tears. I didn't want to read it at first because I thought it was going to be a cliché romantic drama with shooting and death. Thankfully my friend convinced me to go ahead and after page two I saw just how wrong I really was. I won't go into the story line as I wouldn't want to spoil it for anyone. However trust me when I say this is a book you just have to read.

An inspiring book
I have just finished reading Ice Road, and it still fills my head and heart. Slovo writes with compassion of a period in Russian history which brought about so much human suffering. THis is a book that reveals humanity at its worst and at its best, yet Slovo never judges. She lets her characters speak for themselves. Wonderful.

Why Ice Road should win the Orange Prize
ICE ROAD
by
Gillian Slovo
A review by Valerie Rowland

Slovo brings scholarship and accomplished writing to this powerful tale of revolution, political idealism and disillusionment. Slovo's ice, snow and blizzards whirl through the pages, carrying the drama along; a counterpoint to the suffering of ordinary people caught up in the tragedy of war, betrayal and privation.

There is an obvious connection between Slovo's upbringing in South Africa, the daughter of anti-apartheid campaigners and her bold first attempt at a historical novel set in Stalinist Russia, a comparable period in history in which ordinary people struggled to survive repression and revolution. The child Gillian's observation of life around her informs the narrative of Ice Road. Left alone to be «the responsible one» of her siblings Gillian knew the African servants as individuals and personalities. She understood what anyone who has worked as a domestic knows; that the detritus of the household is the key to its characters. To clean a bedroom is to know the intimate secrets of its occupants. Irina, the central character of Ice Road is a cleaner, who observes people and events with a dispassionate eye.

The «I» of Irina and the «I» echoed in the title are the «eyes» of an observant child and the key to the warmth of humanity in this book. Irina comes to learn that there are terrible consequences when people are sacrificed on the altar of idealism.

Ice Road is a celebration of the female spirit finding a path through the blizzards of history. It deserves the Orange Prize.