The conductor
By: Sarah Quigley
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2012
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 303
ISBN-13: 9781908800022; 9781908800039; 9781908800824
Subjects: Fiction; History
Description: June 1941: Nazi troops surround the city of Leningrad, planning to shell and starve its people into submission. Most of the cultural elite escape, but the famous composer Shostakovich stays behind to defend his city. That winter, the bleakest in Russian history, the Party orders Karl Eliasberg, the shy, difficult conductor of a second-rate orchestra, to prepare for the task of a lifetime: he is to organize a performance of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony.
Notes: Novel by a New Zealand author.

Originally published: Auckland, N.Z. : Vintage, 2011.