The Siege: A Novel
The Siegeis one of those novels that is as redemptive as it is  shattering, and they don't come much more shattering than this. The year is  1941, and the good people of Leningrad are squeezed between fear of Stalin's  secret police and rumors that the Germans, despite the incredulity of  military experts, are rapidly advancing on their great city. When the  inevitable happens, 22-year-old Anna, an artist and the sole support for her  young brother, invalid father, and the latter's former mistress, learns to  survive the devastation and mass starvation that the siege brings. In the worst days of winter, Anna falls in love with a doctor, Andrei, who returns her passion, creating  an oasis of emotional privacy within the hell of war.The Siegeis  expertly anchored in sometimes unbearable details of the assault on  Leningrad; the book's sense of place and the author's great skill at pumping  immediacy into the cold facts is something to behold. But this is, finally, a  novel about extremes of experience, from rampant cruelty to the redemptive  power of one person's love.--Tom Keogh