Awards
Shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Novel Award
Synopses & Reviews
Called "elegantly, starkly beautiful" by The New York Times Book Review, The Siege is Helen Dunmore's masterpiece. Her canvas is monumental -- the Nazis' 1941 winter siege on Leningrad that killed six hundred thousand -- but her focus is heartrendingly intimate. One family, the Levins, fights to stay alive in their small apartment, held together by the unlikely courage and resourcefulness of twenty-two-year-old Anna. Though she dreams of an artist's life, she must instead forage for food in the ever more desperate city and watch her little brother grow cruelly thin. Their father, a blacklisted writer who once advocated a robust life of the mind, withers in spirit and body. At such brutal times everything is tested. And yet Dunmore's inspiring story shows that even then, the triumph of the human heart is that love need not fall away. "The novel's imaginative richness," writes The Washington Post, "lies in this implicit question: In dire physical circumstances, is it possible to have an inner life? The answer seems to be that no survival is possible without one." Amid the turmoil of the siege, the unimaginable happens -- two people enter the Levins' frozen home and bring a kind of romance where before there was only bare survival. A sensitive young doctor becomes Anna's devoted partner, and her father is allowed a transcendent final episode with a mysterious woman from his past. The Siege marks an exciting new phase in a brilliant career, observed Publishers Weekly in a starred review: "Dunmore has built a sizable audience ... but this book should lift her to another level of literary prominence." "Dunmore's ... novel ... is an intimate record of an extraordinary human disaster ... a moving story of personal triumph and public tragedy." -- Laura Ciolkowski, San Francisco Chronicle "In Helen Dunmore's hands, this epic subject assumes a lyrical honesty that sometimes wrenches but more often lifts the spirit." -- Frances Taliaferro, The Washington Post "Dunmore unravels the tangle of suffering, war, and base emotions to produce a story woven with love ... Extraordinary." -- Barbara Conaty, Library Journal (starred review)
Review
"[A] novel whose every observation is so sharp the words almost hurt....[T]he novel is a signal achievement, and Anna is a true heroine for our times tender in love, passionate in art, unyielding in her will to survive." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"Dunmore's [novel]...is an intimate record of an extraordinary human disaster....[A] moving story of personal triumph and public tragedy." Laura Ciolkowski, San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Dunmore unravels the tangle of suffering, war, and base emotions to produce a story woven with love....Extraordinary." Library Journal (Starred Review)
Review
"Ultimately, Dunmore's book reads like a Greek tragedy, with some malevolent god inflicting relentless punishment upon a damned city....[M]ore than just a fictionalized chronicle of Leningrad's misery, The Siege is a moving and powerful tale." Jean Charbonneau, The Denver Post
Review
"[N]ot simply a raw and shocking account of wartime heroism and bravery. It ultimately stands as a deeply affecting celebration of the limitless potential for love to inspire the impossible and will further cement Dunmore's reputation as a wonderfully gifted storyteller." Joe Melia, Waterstone's Books Quarterly
Review
"[F]eels more like history than it does like a novel....[M]ixing an easy lyricism with gruesome honesty, she shows us what life is like for civilians in war praying for help, saving the last crust of bread." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Dunmore's portrayal of the Leningrad tragedy alerts readers' senses to all that is basically human and necessary for our survival. Heart-wrenching to read, but impossible to put down, this is quite an inspirational book." Elsa Gaztambide, Booklist
Review
"[A] novel of psychological delicacy and poetic strength as well as a meditation on suffering and endurance....In Helen Dunmore's hands, this epic subject assumes a lyrical honesty that sometimes wrenches but more often lifts the spirit." Frances Taliaferro, Washington Post Book World
Review
"Dunmore is at her best when portraying a horrifying scene in lyrical tones, whether it be a dead man's face covered by scintillating frost or a starving family consuming a pot of jam with drunken bliss. She wisely chooses to keep the war just beyond the novel's fringes, having it lay siege to her story without ever invading the action." Stephen Amidon, The Atlantic Monthly
(read the entire Atlantic Monthly review)
Synopsis
Dunmore's beautiful new drama of two intertwined love stories unfolding during the 1941 siege on Leningrad has already been deemed "a pinnacle in [her] fiction, and in the year's fiction too" (The Telegraph) and "a world-class novel" (The Times (London)). At once epic and intimate, The Siege is a modern masterpiece.
About the Author
Helen Dunmore is the author of seven novels, including A Spell of Winter, With Your Crooked Heart, and Talking to the Dead, and has been published in fifteen countries. She is also a children's novelist, short-story writer, prizewinning poet, and the first-ever winner of England's prestigious Orange Prize.