Using a wealth of new material, this book tells the story of the cruelties inflicted by Stalin and Hitler on a city of exquisite beauty and rich cultural history, and the symphony that inspired its survival.
Sets the composition of Shostakovich's most famous work - his seventh symphony - against the tragic canvas of the siege itself and the years of repression and terror that preceded it.
"A passionate and moving book...nothing short of masterly," said the Wall Street Journal
"A stupendous story, driven by a furious narrative yet biblical in its thematic confrontations of beauty and evil. It's vivid in three dimensions: The Red Army's battles with Hitler's war machine; the ordeals of the Russian people terrorized by the malevolent maniac in the Kremlin; and throughout the faint but swelling counterpoint of hope as the great Dmitri Shostakovich struggles to write the score of his Seventh Symphony to express the soul of his martyred city . . . This is history to cherish."- wrote Harold Evans, the great editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981
