Mikhail never recovers from his injuries and dies. Limited food supplies arrive via the ice road over the frozen Lake Ladoga, but they are nowhere near sufficient to feed the city of over three million people. The winter of 1941–42 is brutal and they struggle with freezing temperatures and the threat of starvation. Frequent visits by Andrei to care for her father brings them close and he moves in with her and Kolya. Andrei, a medical student from the hospital, brings a wounded Mikhail home to Anna's apartment. With winter approaching and strict food rationing, life becomes a struggle for the city's inhabitants.

By September the German army overruns Leningrad's outer defences and encircle the city, cutting off its food supplies. Mikhail joins the People's Volunteers to fight the advancing Germans, while Anna and thousands of other women dig anti-tank traps on the city's outskirts. Anna's family, and thousands of others, flee to the safety of the city. Germany invades the Soviet Union in June 1941 and approaches Leningrad. The second, The Betrayal was published in 2010 and is also set in Leningrad, but later in 1952.Īnna is a nursery-school assistant who lives in a dacha outside Leningrad with her father Mikhail and her young brother Kolya. The Siege is the first of a two-book series. The book was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2002 and for the 2001 Whitbread Prize. It is set in Leningrad just before and during the Siege of Leningrad by German forces in World War II. The Siege is a 2001 historical novel by English writer Helen Dunmore.

Go Fox by Helen Dunmore