Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 24 February 2011.
Betrayal is a powerful and touching novel of ordinary people in the grip of a terrible and sinister regime - 1950s Soviet Union, and a moving portrait of a love that will not be extinguished.
Leningrad, 1952. Andrei, a young hospital doctor, and Anna, a nursery school teacher, are forging a life together in the postwar, postsiege wreckage. But their happiness is precarious, like that of millions of Russians who must avoid the claws of Stalin's merciless Ministry of State Security. So when Andrei is asked to treat the seriously ill child of a senior secret police officer, he and Anna are fearful. Trapped in an impossible, maybe unwinnable game, can they avoid the whispers and watchful eyes of those who will say or do anything to save themselves? The
'Enthralling. Emotionally gripping ... ordinary people struggling against a city's beautiful indifference, and clinging on for dear life' Daily Telegraph
'Beautifully crafted, gripping, moving, enlightening. Sure to be one of the best historical novels of the year' Time Out
'Scrupulous, pitch-perfect. With heart-pounding force, Dunmore builds up a double narrative of suspense' Sunday Times
'Magnificent, brave, tender ... with a unique gift for immersing the reader in the taste, smell and fear of a story' Independent on Sunday
Author
About Helen Dunmore
Helen Dunmore was the author of fourteen novels. Her first, Zennor in Darkness, explored the events which led to D H Lawrence’s expulsion from Cornwall (on suspicion of spying) during the First World War. It won the McKitterick Prize. Her third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize, now the Baileys Prize for Women’s Fiction. Her bestselling novel The Siege, set during the Siege of Leningrad, was described by Antony Beevor as ‘a world-class novel’ and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Orange Prize.
Helen Dunmore’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages and she was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She died in June 2017.
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