Caroline Walton: 2 books

For forty years Ivan Petrov careered, stumbled, staggered and rampaged all over the vast Soviet empire. Homeless (an illegal condition in the communist utopia), in and out of prison camps, almost always drunk, and with a gift for hilariously sending up the tragic absurdities of Soviet life, Ivan was...

The Besieged is a beautifully observed account of one of the defining moments of twentieth-century history: the Siege of Leningrad. The Siege began in September 1941, when German forces severed the last connection to the city, and was to last for 872 days, during which the dying population suffered horrors almost beyond the powers of description.