First published 2005
Boris Aleksandrovich believes he can balance his ideals with political reality as a bureaucrat in wartime Leningrad. His daughter Natasha discovers the brutal cost of her father's compromises when she falls in love during the city's siege. Meanwhile, Irina watches the family's struggles unfold. Boris had convinced her to join a disastrous Arctic expedition where she nearly died. When she returns to Leningrad, he feels obligated to give her a place in his household. As the siege tightens around them, Irina witnesses how Boris's political maneuvering destroys the people closest to him. She learns that loving someone specific matters more than serving abstract causes. The three characters face impossible choices as one of history's most brutal sieges tests everything they believe about loyalty, family, and survival.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, war
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: impossible-choices, loyalty, survival
Setting: Leningrad, Arctic
Period: Wartime
556 pages · Paperback · W. W. Norton & Company
Content warnings: death, war