The Seige - Helen Dunmore

9564 Words39 Pages
The Seige – Helen Dunmore The frontispiece of this novel is a historical archive document - the sinister declaration from the German Naval Staff, relaying Hitler’s order that Leningrad (formerly St Petersburg) was to be annihilated and its inhabitants starved to death (They would otherwise have to be fed!) Although it was published some years ago, an analysis of this un-putdown-able novel was recently featured in The Guardian newspaper’s Saturday ‘Review’. Dunmore really gets you inside what it must have been like to be an inhabitant of Leningrad during the first, horrific winter of its 900 day siege by German forces during WW II. Although the author is not herself Russian, you feel completely immersed in Russianness. We follow the struggle for survival of Anna and her constant care for her young brother Kolya; her ailing, war-wounded father, Mikhail; and her father’s long-standing friend and one time mistress, the actress Marina – a non-person as far as the regime was concerned and therefore dangerous to know. The story begins with life in the city shortly before Operation Barbarossa, the unforeseen German onslaught that broke the Hitler-Stalin pact. We live the everyday life of scouring the city and queuing for food at the first rumour of something extra in stock; the acceptance that the party elite have a parallel, privileged existence; the pleasures of the countryside and its opportunities for foraging and growing one’s own vegetables; the constant need to guard one’s tongue for fear of being denounced to the authorities as a spy, saboteur or Trotskyite, even if out of jealousy for having a bigger apartment... And the fear heightened by Mikhail’s being a writer who has a history of failing to toe the party line. Dunmore vividly depicts the seasons on the river Neva, Lake Ladoga and surrounding marshes where Peter the Great chose to site his new

More about The Seige - Helen Dunmore

Open Document