Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for 2010.Leningrad in 1952: a city recovering from war, where Anna, a nursery school teacher, and Andrei, a young hospital doctor, are forging a life together. Summers at the dacha, preparations for the hospital ball, work and care of sixteen-year-old Kolya fill their minds.
They try hard to avoid coming to the attention of the authorities, but even so their private happiness is precarious. Stalin is still in power, and the Ministry for State Security has new targets in it's sights When Andrei has to treat the seriously ill child of a senior secret police officer, Volkov, he finds himself and his family caught in a impossible game of life and death - for in a land ruled by whispers and watchfulness, betrayal can come closest to you...
Filled with suspense, the tension steadily builds from the first chapter. To live in a time of suspicion and fear is almost unimaginable, but Helen Dunmore has the gift of drawing you in with her narrative.
