The Siege
By Helen Dunmore

**FROM THE AUTHOR OFand INSIDE THE WAVE, THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017**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...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.'Remarkable, affecting...there are few more interesting stories than this; and few writers who could have told it better' Rachel Cusk,and Daily Telegraph'Literary writing of the highest order set against a background if suffering so intimately reconstructed it is hard to believe that Dunmore was not there' Richard Overy,and 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,and The TimesNovelist and poet Helen Dunmore has achieved great critical acclaim since publishing her first adult novel, the McKitterick Prize winning,and Zennor in Darkness. Her novels,and Counting the Stars,and Your Blue-Eyed Boy,and With Your Crooked Heart,and Burning Bright,and House of Orphans,and Mourning Ruby,and A Spell of Winter, andand Talking to the Dead, and her collection of short storiesand Love of Fat Menand are all published by Penguin. This edition includes the first chapter ofand Betrayal, the sequel toand The Siege.