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.
The Siege
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Amazon 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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"'[She is] one of this country's most accomplished literary talents' Daily Telegraph 'Beautifully fulfils the highest function of a storyteller - to make you wonder what will happen next... electrifying' Sunday Times"
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
46 of 46 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
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...
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...
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful
By vicky allen
Format:Paperback
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.
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful
By Mike
Format:Hardcover
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.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
By Carolyn
Format:Hardcover
The reader surfaces from this book with a sense of amazement coupled with guilt. The world around us is blanketed with a cornucopia of food, warmth, comforts of every kind. Yet only a few decades past millions suffered a living death in Leningrad and Dunmore is able to place us at the very centre of the besieged city - indeed, in a stark and freezing apartment with a small cast of noble characters. Anna and her family are drawn with a poetic intensity that mirrors the great soul and endurance of the Russian people. Of course, there are crooks and cowards in this snowy mausoleum of a place where the world seems to teeter on the edge of a void but crowning all is a sense of the heroic, the eternal power of love, the unstoppable continuity of nature and humanity's place in it.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
By "cathsmal1"
Format:Hardcover
A harrowing, beautifully written account of the siege of Leningrad. The book is well reasearched and very interesting, but it is minutiae of life -literally staying alive - which Helen Dunmore describes so well. The book concentrates mainly on one family and how they cope during this ordeal - it shows the ingenuity of people pushed to the limit of endurance. It is a moving and humane book which has kindled my interest in this period of Russian history.
I have long been a fan of Helen Dunmore's work - but in my opinion this novel is the best thing she has written - a brilliant return to the form of "Burning Bright" and "A spell of Winter".
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
The Siege is by far the best novel Helen Dunmore has written, and establishes her as an important writer. It uses her skill at describing women's domestic and emotional lives but widens it in placing her characters in the 1941 Siege of Leningrad. Anna,an aspiring artist has to look after her father (a writer who can't get published because his work isn't upbeat enough for the Party) and little brother. When we first see her she's digging up onions at the family dacha, and those she can't dig up she destroys - a foretaste of the scroched earth policy that made the Russians impossible to defeat. Pretty soon, as winters and the Nazis close in, all the pets are eaten and there are rumours of cannibalism. Anna's family survive, not just physically but morally although at a terrible price. One of the things that keeps them going is the memory of Russian literature, even when they have to burn their books to keep warm. Although Anna's father and her lover are insubstantial characters, the depiction of the women more than compensates. This is a marvellous, gripping novel about suffering and love, which fuses the world of women's fiction with that of Tolstoy.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By lilysmum
VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I was recommended this book when I reviewed the book "City of Thieves", by David Benioff, which is also about the Leningrad Siege, but the difference between the two books is that one is narrated by a man and in this one the main character is a woman. The different perspectives on the same harsh winter where possibly a million people starved to death are quite striking if you read the two novels one after the other, as I did. It would be hard to say which I preferred. This novel tells the story from Anna's point of view. She struggles to survive the winter in St Petersburg, living in a small apartment where ice forms inside the windows and on hot drinks. The small family end up burning books and stewing a leather manicure case to survive. Dunmore captures the period perfectly and for days afterwards I found myself contemplating the contents of my food cupboards, wondering how long I could eke them out and feed my family in a siege situation. An excellent read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Siege
This book was a choice from our book group. This was a good choice of book and enjoyed by most of our group.
Published 13 days ago by Mrs Pauline Hinson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful, lyrical writing
She manages to convey the dignity and nobility of the human spirit under extremes of hardship and suffering. Very moving.
Published 17 days ago by Val N
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great writing
Helen Dunmore makes you feel so involved in the story that you feel cold and hungry just reading about the siege.
Published 25 days ago by Mr. W. G. Churchill
5.0 out of 5 stars
Leningrad in the Winter of 1941
Fiction but based on fact - I like learning my history this way! An easy page-turner. This book makes you appreciate how lucky we are in 2013. Thoroughly recommended
Published 2 months ago by cillald
3.0 out of 5 stars
Dismal
I agree with both 1star and 5star reviewers so have gone middle of the road. This is a really good and well written story, but as others have said it is hard to get any empathy... Read more
Published 4 months ago by gillynm
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book in great condition
Was recommended this book but wasn't sure if it was my kind of book, hence sourcing it at Amazon. Book came promptly, excellent condition. Brilliant!
Published 4 months ago by Lynn Lymer
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poignant
Read this on a recommendation as we were going to St Petersburg for a long weekend and becuase of this it was particularly interesting reading about places we were about to visit. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Maxbaz
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent but harrowing.
A very difficult but moving story which deals with The Siege of Leningrad. Impossible to put down with likeable characters but with a terrible but compulsive story.
Published 5 months ago by Kimco
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Siege
I read the Betrayal before this but it in no way diminished the pleasure.It vividly describes the catastrophic events, the initial denial and the way that expectations change over... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Dilly
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Siege
A good tale well told with a very good feel for the horror of living in a police-political state combined with famine in a snow locked northern winter.
Published 13 months ago by SWL Strickland
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