These titles are highly recommended and were a great inspiration in writing this book:
Non-Fiction
- The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad by Harrison E. Salisbury
By all accounts, this is the definitive history of the Siege of Leningrad. Salisbury – a Russian scholar, reporter, and historian – fills his book with the stories of survivors and memories of the dead.
- Blockade Diary by Lidiya Ginzburg
Published forty years after the Siege, this work of ‘documentary fiction’ celebrates the intellectual resilience of the Russian people.
- Leningrad Under Siege by Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin
First-hand accounts of the worst days of the blockade.
- Writing the Siege of Leningrad by Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina
A collection of diaries that describes the lives of ordinary women during the Siege.
- Shurik: A Story of the Siege of Leningrad by Kyra Ptrovskaya Wayne
A young nurse saves an orphan boy during the Siege. Based on the author’s experiences.
- Siege and Survival: The Odyssey of a Leningrader by Elena Skrjabina
One woman’s devastating account of survival, escape, and loss.
- Leningrad: State of Siege by Michael Jones
Stories from both the civilian and military points of view.
- St Petersburg: A Cultural History by Solomon Volkov
A fascinating history of the cultural influence of the city and its artists, including Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Balanchine, and Shostakovich.
- Cinema and Soviet Society: From the Revolution to the Death of Stalin by Peter Kenez
Kenez shows how the Soviet film industry responded to the political and social currents following the revolution, including the imposition of Socialist Realism, the relative freedoms during World War II, and the cultural stagnation of the late Stalinist era.
Fiction
- The Siege by Helen Dunmore
Two love stories unfold and intertwine as ordinary people struggle amidst the tragedy of the Siege.
- Ice Road by Gillian Slovo
A novel that follows a Leningrad family’s story from the terror of the mid 1930’s through to the Siege. Beautifully realized.
- City of Thieves by David Benioff
During the Siege, two condemned prisoners are sent on an unlikely mission that takes them through the dying city.
- The End of Sorrow by J.V. Love
An inspired examination of faith, survival, and even a kind of optimism, in the face of evil.
- The Silent Angel by Heinrich Böll
If Günter Grass is the magical surrealist of post-WWII German literature, Heinrich Böll is its conscience.
- The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn examines the atmosphere of Stalinist terror through the lives of a group of scientists and their prison/laboratory. Who will retain their humanity in this first circle of Hell?
- Petersburg by Andrei Bely
Bely paints a vivid portrait of St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1905, full of chaos and intrigue. His city, like Joyce’s Dublin, bursts with life and eccentric characters, and his elliptical prose has the same hypnotic effect.