Helen Dunmore

'Remarkable, affecting . . . There are few more interesting stories than this; and few writers who could have told it better' Rachel Cusk, Daily Telegraph 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. 'Literary writing of the highest order set against a background of 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 'A remarkable parable of human survival against the odds' Katie Owen, Mail on Sunday

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