What do you think?
Rate this book
The Siege #2
The Betrayal
A riveting and emotionally absorbing portrait of post-war Soviet Russia, a world of violence and terror, where the severest acts of betrayal can come from the most trusted allies.
Internationally-acclaimed author Helen Dunmore follows her bestselling novel, The Siege, with a riveting and emotionally absorbing portrait of post-war Soviet Russia, a world of violence and terror, where the severest acts of betrayal can come from the most trusted allies.
In 1952 Leningrad, Andrei, a young doctor, and Anna, a nursery school teacher, are forging a life together in the postwar, post-siege wreckage. But they know their happiness is precarious, like that of millions of Russians who must avoid the claws of Stalin's merciless Ministry of State Security. When Andrei is forced to treat the seriously ill child of a senior secret police officer, his every move is scrutinized, and it becomes painfully clear that his own fate, and that of his family, is bound to the child's. Trapped in an impossible game of life and death, and pitted against a power-mad father's raging grief, Andrei and Anna must avoid the whispers and watchful eyes of those who will say or do anything to save themselves.
With The Betrayal, Dunmore returns with a powerful and stirring novel of ordinary people in the grip of a terrible and sinister regime, and an evocative tale of a love that will not be silenced.
Internationally-acclaimed author Helen Dunmore follows her bestselling novel, The Siege, with a riveting and emotionally absorbing portrait of post-war Soviet Russia, a world of violence and terror, where the severest acts of betrayal can come from the most trusted allies.
In 1952 Leningrad, Andrei, a young doctor, and Anna, a nursery school teacher, are forging a life together in the postwar, post-siege wreckage. But they know their happiness is precarious, like that of millions of Russians who must avoid the claws of Stalin's merciless Ministry of State Security. When Andrei is forced to treat the seriously ill child of a senior secret police officer, his every move is scrutinized, and it becomes painfully clear that his own fate, and that of his family, is bound to the child's. Trapped in an impossible game of life and death, and pitted against a power-mad father's raging grief, Andrei and Anna must avoid the whispers and watchful eyes of those who will say or do anything to save themselves.
With The Betrayal, Dunmore returns with a powerful and stirring novel of ordinary people in the grip of a terrible and sinister regime, and an evocative tale of a love that will not be silenced.
330 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
238 people are currently reading
2395 people want to read
About the author
Helen Dunmore
117 books955 followersI was born in December 1952, in Yorkshire, the second of four children. My father was the eldest of twelve, and this extended family has no doubt had a strong influence on my life, as have my own children. In a large family you hear a great many stories. You also come to understand very early that stories hold quite different meanings for different listeners, and can be recast from many viewpoints.
Poetry was very important to me from childhood. I began by listening to and learning by heart all kinds of rhymes and hymns and ballads, and then went on to make up my own poems, using the forms I’d heard. Writing these down came a little later.
I studied English at the University of York, and after graduation taught English as a foreign language in Finland.
At around this time I began to write the poems which formed my first poetry collection, The Apple Fall, and to publish these in magazines. I also completed two novels; fortunately neither survives, and it was more than ten years before I wrote another novel.
During this time I published several collections of poems, and wrote some of the short stories which were later collected in Love of Fat Men. I began to travel a great deal within the UK and around the world, for poetry tours and writing residences. This experience of working in many different countries and cultures has been very important to my work. I reviewed poetry for Stand and Poetry Review and later for The Observer, and subsequently reviewed fiction for The Observer, The Times and The Guardian. My critical work includes introductions to the poems of Emily Brontë, the short stories of D H Lawrence and F Scott Fitzgerald, a study of Virginia Woolf’s relationships with women and Introductions to the Folio Society's edition of Anna Karenina and to the new Penguin Classics edition of Tolstoy's My Confession.
During the 1980s and early 1990s I taught poetry and creative writing, tutored residential writing courses for the Arvon Foundation and took part in the Poetry Society's Writer in Schools scheme, as well as giving readings and workshops in schools, hospitals, prisons and every other kind of place where a poem could conceivably be welcome. I also taught at the University of Glamorgan, the University of Bristol's Continuing Education Department and for the Open College of the Arts.
In the late 1980s I began to publish short stories, and these were the beginning of a breakthrough into fiction. What I had learned of prose technique through the short story gave me the impetus to start writing novels. My first novel for children was Going to Egypt, published in 1992, and my first novel for adults was Zennor in Darkness, published in 1993, which won the McKitterick Prize. This was also my first researched novel, set in the First World War and dealing with the period when D H Lawrence and his wife Frieda lived in Zennor in Cornwall, and came under suspicion as German spies.
My third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996, and since then I have published a number of novels, short story collections and books for children. Full details of all these books are available on this website. The last of The Ingo Quartet, The Crossing of Ingo, was published in paperback in Spring 2009.
My seventh novel, The Siege (2001) was shortlisted both for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction. This was another researched novel, which grew from a lifelong love of Russian history, culture and literature. It is is set in Leningrad during the first year of the siege of the city by German forces, which lasted for 880 days from the fall of Mga on 30th August 1941. The Siege has been translated into Russian by Tatyana Averchina, and extracts have been broadcast on radio in St Petersburg. House of Orphans was published in 2006, and in 2008 Counting the Stars. Its central characters are the Roman poet Catullus, who lived during the last years of the Republic,
Poetry was very important to me from childhood. I began by listening to and learning by heart all kinds of rhymes and hymns and ballads, and then went on to make up my own poems, using the forms I’d heard. Writing these down came a little later.
I studied English at the University of York, and after graduation taught English as a foreign language in Finland.
At around this time I began to write the poems which formed my first poetry collection, The Apple Fall, and to publish these in magazines. I also completed two novels; fortunately neither survives, and it was more than ten years before I wrote another novel.
During this time I published several collections of poems, and wrote some of the short stories which were later collected in Love of Fat Men. I began to travel a great deal within the UK and around the world, for poetry tours and writing residences. This experience of working in many different countries and cultures has been very important to my work. I reviewed poetry for Stand and Poetry Review and later for The Observer, and subsequently reviewed fiction for The Observer, The Times and The Guardian. My critical work includes introductions to the poems of Emily Brontë, the short stories of D H Lawrence and F Scott Fitzgerald, a study of Virginia Woolf’s relationships with women and Introductions to the Folio Society's edition of Anna Karenina and to the new Penguin Classics edition of Tolstoy's My Confession.
During the 1980s and early 1990s I taught poetry and creative writing, tutored residential writing courses for the Arvon Foundation and took part in the Poetry Society's Writer in Schools scheme, as well as giving readings and workshops in schools, hospitals, prisons and every other kind of place where a poem could conceivably be welcome. I also taught at the University of Glamorgan, the University of Bristol's Continuing Education Department and for the Open College of the Arts.
In the late 1980s I began to publish short stories, and these were the beginning of a breakthrough into fiction. What I had learned of prose technique through the short story gave me the impetus to start writing novels. My first novel for children was Going to Egypt, published in 1992, and my first novel for adults was Zennor in Darkness, published in 1993, which won the McKitterick Prize. This was also my first researched novel, set in the First World War and dealing with the period when D H Lawrence and his wife Frieda lived in Zennor in Cornwall, and came under suspicion as German spies.
My third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996, and since then I have published a number of novels, short story collections and books for children. Full details of all these books are available on this website. The last of The Ingo Quartet, The Crossing of Ingo, was published in paperback in Spring 2009.
My seventh novel, The Siege (2001) was shortlisted both for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction. This was another researched novel, which grew from a lifelong love of Russian history, culture and literature. It is is set in Leningrad during the first year of the siege of the city by German forces, which lasted for 880 days from the fall of Mga on 30th August 1941. The Siege has been translated into Russian by Tatyana Averchina, and extracts have been broadcast on radio in St Petersburg. House of Orphans was published in 2006, and in 2008 Counting the Stars. Its central characters are the Roman poet Catullus, who lived during the last years of the Republic,
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 344 reviews
January 16, 2022
Having just completed my reading of The Siege, I decided to read this second novel while all the details of the first were fresh in my mind. So, I picked up Anna and Andrei’s story, finding them well-settled with Kolya in Leningrad, Anna at the nursery school and Andrei working at the hospital. The starving days of the Siege are over, but that tragedy is just around the corner for anyone in Stalin’s Russia is no surprise. It comes for Anna and Andrei, in the form of a highly placed political figure's sick child that Andrei is forced to treat.
This family sees the danger ahead of them, but in a society that fosters nothing but fear, there is no place to hide. You can walk the line carefully, but the danger is real and about you always.
There’s no protection in making yourself small and hoping to become invisible. All you do is make yourself small.
Having survived the Siege, the war, the starvation and the specter of death on every park bench, the world they now inhabit might be even more threatening and frightening. At least when the Germans were attacking the city, the enemy was known, identifiable. In post-war Leningrad the enemy could be a neighbor who wants your larger apartment, a colleague who wants to escape scrutiny himself, or someone you don't know who simply takes notice of you and learns your name.
Why do we think that the present is stronger than the past? They are not even separate. The past is alive, waiting. She and Andrei turned away from it because they had to, but it only grew more powerful. Part of her will never leave that frozen room.
Anna is living in a world that expects, in truth, demands, that she bury her past in a fictional account that is rosier; that she deny her hardships and the struggles of those she loved, because to acknowledge them is seen as casting an aspersion on the government or the system. The horror of the past seems to be over, but horror is horror in whatever form it takes. Life is a tight wire, balanced above a precipice, and all it takes to make the walker fall is a gentle wind.
What they face and how they struggle to survive is laid out in the starkest prose, with a fear that is palpable. I not only felt the fear, but the helplessness, the inability to know who to trust, the need for everyone to say and do only that which would save themselves, if they could even decipher what that might be. There is no rhyme or reason, and a lie that is an impossibility can convict you as easily as a truth. This is an entire country of citizens living with the peril of betrayal, with such an uncertainty that it is miraculous that anyone dreamed to survive it.
This family sees the danger ahead of them, but in a society that fosters nothing but fear, there is no place to hide. You can walk the line carefully, but the danger is real and about you always.
There’s no protection in making yourself small and hoping to become invisible. All you do is make yourself small.
Having survived the Siege, the war, the starvation and the specter of death on every park bench, the world they now inhabit might be even more threatening and frightening. At least when the Germans were attacking the city, the enemy was known, identifiable. In post-war Leningrad the enemy could be a neighbor who wants your larger apartment, a colleague who wants to escape scrutiny himself, or someone you don't know who simply takes notice of you and learns your name.
Why do we think that the present is stronger than the past? They are not even separate. The past is alive, waiting. She and Andrei turned away from it because they had to, but it only grew more powerful. Part of her will never leave that frozen room.
Anna is living in a world that expects, in truth, demands, that she bury her past in a fictional account that is rosier; that she deny her hardships and the struggles of those she loved, because to acknowledge them is seen as casting an aspersion on the government or the system. The horror of the past seems to be over, but horror is horror in whatever form it takes. Life is a tight wire, balanced above a precipice, and all it takes to make the walker fall is a gentle wind.
What they face and how they struggle to survive is laid out in the starkest prose, with a fear that is palpable. I not only felt the fear, but the helplessness, the inability to know who to trust, the need for everyone to say and do only that which would save themselves, if they could even decipher what that might be. There is no rhyme or reason, and a lie that is an impossibility can convict you as easily as a truth. This is an entire country of citizens living with the peril of betrayal, with such an uncertainty that it is miraculous that anyone dreamed to survive it.
July 29, 2017
Why do we think that the present is stronger than the past? They are not even separate. The past is alive, waiting. [...] It claims what is its own.
Rarely have I read a novel so effective in evoking the feeling of Stalinist Russia; the suffocating, overwhelming paranoia of a place where everyone is alert to dissenters, saboteurs, and enemies of the state, where people are willing to inform on those around them to save themselves, or just to improve their own situation. Dunmore builds the uncertainty, watchfulness, and selfishness into the very bones of her story, making her two main characters, Anna and Andrei, stand out all the more. Perhaps it was this dichotomy that made them seem unreal to me, but they were almost too perfect: self-sacrificing, brave, hopeful. Again, this may say more about me than them, but where I could imagine all the other people in the novel with real clarity, these two were just too good to be believed. The book offers them as a symbol of enduring love, able to persist even in the most difficult of times, a confidence well at odds with their daily lives and gut wrenching enough in the climate of the novel to make the reader sick with worry for them.
It was masterfully done by the author, each word chosen for emotion and impact. Her death this year was a sad loss, but i'm thankful that it brought me to her works.
Rarely have I read a novel so effective in evoking the feeling of Stalinist Russia; the suffocating, overwhelming paranoia of a place where everyone is alert to dissenters, saboteurs, and enemies of the state, where people are willing to inform on those around them to save themselves, or just to improve their own situation. Dunmore builds the uncertainty, watchfulness, and selfishness into the very bones of her story, making her two main characters, Anna and Andrei, stand out all the more. Perhaps it was this dichotomy that made them seem unreal to me, but they were almost too perfect: self-sacrificing, brave, hopeful. Again, this may say more about me than them, but where I could imagine all the other people in the novel with real clarity, these two were just too good to be believed. The book offers them as a symbol of enduring love, able to persist even in the most difficult of times, a confidence well at odds with their daily lives and gut wrenching enough in the climate of the novel to make the reader sick with worry for them.
It was masterfully done by the author, each word chosen for emotion and impact. Her death this year was a sad loss, but i'm thankful that it brought me to her works.
October 17, 2016
A marvelous read. Soviet Russia comes to life in all its paranoid complexity, seen through the eyes of one achingly poignant family: an idealistic young doctor and his quiet wife, both survivors of the Leningrad siege and its appalling starvation. All they want is to enjoy the tiny pleasures of life allowed by the state, and build a life together . . . but the wheels of power have a way of grinding people like this into paste, and they both know the danger they are in when the young doctor is called upon to treat the mortally ill son of a very powerful party member. If the boy dies, an entire family may be wiped out in casual retribution, and everyone knows it. I was flipping the final pages with my heart in my throat, deeply terrified for the fate of one small fictional family.
October 23, 2011
Having read Helen DunmoreThe Siege I had her sequel on my shelf for a very long time and decided it was time to read it. I wasn’t blown away by the The Siege but still was intrigued by the blurb of The Betrayal and decided to read it, but this novel is also a bit flat and dull.
Set in Leningrad in 1952 toward the end of the reign of Stalin, Anna a nursery school teacher, and her husband Andrei a doctor live a quiet existence in their two room apartment. They try hard not to come to the attention of the authorities but when Andrei has to treat the seriously ill child of a senior secret police officer he finds himself and his family caught in an impossible game of life and death.
The blurb makes you want to delve into this book and read and read to the end but for me this was a slow and flat read and I felt there was something lacking in the story perhaps it was the lack of historical detail or no connection with the characters, I also found the climax of the story frustrating and lacked imagination.
On the plus side I felt that Dunmore portrayed the fear and the suspicions of the time very well and how living in fear of your neighbours and friends was an everyday and real occurrence, this is a short novel and not too taxing. Having read a good few books on this period of history this is not one of the better ones. I would still really recommend Child 44 and City of Thieves
Set in Leningrad in 1952 toward the end of the reign of Stalin, Anna a nursery school teacher, and her husband Andrei a doctor live a quiet existence in their two room apartment. They try hard not to come to the attention of the authorities but when Andrei has to treat the seriously ill child of a senior secret police officer he finds himself and his family caught in an impossible game of life and death.
The blurb makes you want to delve into this book and read and read to the end but for me this was a slow and flat read and I felt there was something lacking in the story perhaps it was the lack of historical detail or no connection with the characters, I also found the climax of the story frustrating and lacked imagination.
On the plus side I felt that Dunmore portrayed the fear and the suspicions of the time very well and how living in fear of your neighbours and friends was an everyday and real occurrence, this is a short novel and not too taxing. Having read a good few books on this period of history this is not one of the better ones. I would still really recommend Child 44 and City of Thieves
January 6, 2018
Alas, this Sequel Stagnates
I ended my review of Dunmore's The Siege, set in Leningrad during the German blockade of 1941-43, with the words "the survivors have rediscovered their humanity." In this sequel, however, set ten years further on, the loss of humanity has returned, at least for large sections of the population. Now it is not warfare or famine that they fear, but the tentacles of the Soviet apparatus run by an increasingly paranoid Stalin, where you must remain professionally invisible to keep your job, and denounce your own husband or wife to avoid the destruction of your entire family. The authorities have even suppressed all memorials of the Siege, as ill befitting the image of Soviet action in the Great Patriotic War, so even the sense of shared heroism that lighted Dunmore's earlier novel is replaced here by a timorous despair.
I cannot go further without revealing the names of the survivors from the earlier novel, hence the spoiler. For those that have read the prequel, however, I do have more to say….
I ended my review of Dunmore's The Siege, set in Leningrad during the German blockade of 1941-43, with the words "the survivors have rediscovered their humanity." In this sequel, however, set ten years further on, the loss of humanity has returned, at least for large sections of the population. Now it is not warfare or famine that they fear, but the tentacles of the Soviet apparatus run by an increasingly paranoid Stalin, where you must remain professionally invisible to keep your job, and denounce your own husband or wife to avoid the destruction of your entire family. The authorities have even suppressed all memorials of the Siege, as ill befitting the image of Soviet action in the Great Patriotic War, so even the sense of shared heroism that lighted Dunmore's earlier novel is replaced here by a timorous despair.
I cannot go further without revealing the names of the survivors from the earlier novel, hence the spoiler. For those that have read the prequel, however, I do have more to say….
August 30, 2010
Despite the Booker long-listing, or maybe because of it, I approached this one with some trepidation. I've never read any Helen Dunmore, and I remember being put off by a review of Mourning Ruby that called it "like a Russian doll" - too literary for me, I thought, and I've never touched her stuff since. So I pick this one up, and then find it's a sequel to The Siege, which I haven't read - but don't be put off by that, I wasn't, and it worked perfectly as a stand-alone. And I now have a new author to add to my list of favourites and acquire the entire back catalogue - this book was quite superb.
Set in 1950s Leningrad, in the last days of Lenin, we encounter Andrei the paediatric doctor, his wife Anna who works in a kindergarten and Anna's young brother Kolya. These are good people in a loving household, and against the extraordinary tension and oppression of the last days of Lenin we watch them doing the ordinary things of life - weekends at the dacha, eking out the food, arguing with neighbours, meeting friends, dressing for a dance. When Andrei finds himself leading the hospital treatment of the dying son of Volkov, a chief of the secret police, the world comes crashing down in a way that makes you want to do something about the unjustness of it .
The characterisation is superb, major and minor characters alike - even Volkov, whose anger, fear and irrationality can almost be understood. The tension throughout the book is palpable - this is a world unlike anything we'll ever know, cold for reasons other than the ubiquitous snow, where no-one can be trusted and freedom's an illusion. And it's a truly excellent read - the author has a lovely flowing poetic style (in a good way) that makes you want to read on. And although The Betrayal paints a vivid picture of the political scene, this is a really touching personal and emotional story about ordinary individuals who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Set in 1950s Leningrad, in the last days of Lenin, we encounter Andrei the paediatric doctor, his wife Anna who works in a kindergarten and Anna's young brother Kolya. These are good people in a loving household, and against the extraordinary tension and oppression of the last days of Lenin we watch them doing the ordinary things of life - weekends at the dacha, eking out the food, arguing with neighbours, meeting friends, dressing for a dance. When Andrei finds himself leading the hospital treatment of the dying son of Volkov, a chief of the secret police, the world comes crashing down in a way that makes you want to do something about the unjustness of it .
The characterisation is superb, major and minor characters alike - even Volkov, whose anger, fear and irrationality can almost be understood. The tension throughout the book is palpable - this is a world unlike anything we'll ever know, cold for reasons other than the ubiquitous snow, where no-one can be trusted and freedom's an illusion. And it's a truly excellent read - the author has a lovely flowing poetic style (in a good way) that makes you want to read on. And although The Betrayal paints a vivid picture of the political scene, this is a really touching personal and emotional story about ordinary individuals who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
February 22, 2019
Distressingly brilliant.
September 19, 2022
‘It’s a fresh June morning without a trace of humidity, but Russov is sweating.’
Leningrad, 1952. The war is over, the siege of Leningrad has ended, but life is still fraught with danger. Anna, her sixteen-year-old brother Kolya, and her husband Andrei live in a small flat. Anna is a nursery schoolteacher and Andrei is a paediatric physician with a special interest in juvenile arthritis. Gorya Volkov, the ten-year-old son of a man high up in the Ministry for State Security, is admitted to the hospital. Russov, terrified of the consequences should something go wrong, is determined to refer Gorya to Andrei.
Andrei discovers that Gorya has a cancerous tumour in his leg. Andrei’s advice, that an amputation is required, is reluctantly accepted. Doctor Brodskaya is the surgeon. Gorya is an only child, and when it is discovered that the malignancy has spread, the consequences for those directly involved in his treatment are awful.
‘Rumours? Everything’s a rumour in this country, until it happens to you.’
I read this novel unaware that it was a sequel. But, while I have added ‘The Siege’ to my reading
list, I believe that this novel can be read as a standalone. Ms Dunmore captures the atmosphere of life in Stalin’s Russia: the bureaucracy, the watchful neighbours, the fear. The tension builds until the end, only lifting when Stalin dies. I finished the book wanting more, wanting to know what would happen next.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Leningrad, 1952. The war is over, the siege of Leningrad has ended, but life is still fraught with danger. Anna, her sixteen-year-old brother Kolya, and her husband Andrei live in a small flat. Anna is a nursery schoolteacher and Andrei is a paediatric physician with a special interest in juvenile arthritis. Gorya Volkov, the ten-year-old son of a man high up in the Ministry for State Security, is admitted to the hospital. Russov, terrified of the consequences should something go wrong, is determined to refer Gorya to Andrei.
Andrei discovers that Gorya has a cancerous tumour in his leg. Andrei’s advice, that an amputation is required, is reluctantly accepted. Doctor Brodskaya is the surgeon. Gorya is an only child, and when it is discovered that the malignancy has spread, the consequences for those directly involved in his treatment are awful.
‘Rumours? Everything’s a rumour in this country, until it happens to you.’
I read this novel unaware that it was a sequel. But, while I have added ‘The Siege’ to my reading
list, I believe that this novel can be read as a standalone. Ms Dunmore captures the atmosphere of life in Stalin’s Russia: the bureaucracy, the watchful neighbours, the fear. The tension builds until the end, only lifting when Stalin dies. I finished the book wanting more, wanting to know what would happen next.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
March 2, 2018
Follow up to the outstanding The Siege set 10 years or so post war just before Stalin's death (which occurs at the end of the book). Andrei is a paediatric doctor specialising in infant rheumatism, Anna is a teacher in an efficient soviet run nursery, Kolya a 15 year old piano playing. Anna in particular is still haunted by the memories of the cold and hunger siege, she and Andrei live their life as carefully as possible to avoid the new fears haunting them of denunciation and arrest.
Andrei is manoeuvred by a colleague into diagnosing the son of a secret service chief Volkov who has leg cancer (and in doing so is unable to avoid losing the anonymity he and Anna have cultivated for so long). Andrei's Jewish colleague (who Volkov doesn't trust) amputates the leg but when the cancer returns aggressively to his lungs Andrei is suspended and then arrested and treated incredibly harshly in prison.
It becomes clear that the case is part of the Doctor's Plot which (in real life) was Stalin's last purge against Jews and other conspirators deliberately mis-diagnosing and mis-treating "heroes" and their families.
Another excellent read - again conveying so much of what it means to live through the circumstances.
Andrei is manoeuvred by a colleague into diagnosing the son of a secret service chief Volkov who has leg cancer (and in doing so is unable to avoid losing the anonymity he and Anna have cultivated for so long). Andrei's Jewish colleague (who Volkov doesn't trust) amputates the leg but when the cancer returns aggressively to his lungs Andrei is suspended and then arrested and treated incredibly harshly in prison.
It becomes clear that the case is part of the Doctor's Plot which (in real life) was Stalin's last purge against Jews and other conspirators deliberately mis-diagnosing and mis-treating "heroes" and their families.
Another excellent read - again conveying so much of what it means to live through the circumstances.
August 29, 2016
Very well written, and delicately drawn -- suspenseful and evocative without being over the top in its depictions of Stalin's depravities (Tom Rob Smith, I'm looking at you). It's an interesting combination of suspense and historical drama with really thoughtful writing that focuses more on the small details than on the big reveals.
The central love story is compelling and realistic, and the other characters are economically drawn but memorable and real as well. I found the suspense almost painful at points - because I cared about these characters.
I think I would have been a bit at sea as to who everyone was and why I cared if I hadn't read The Siege -- this should be more explicitly marketed as a sequel. And I'd love to read another book about this family...
The central love story is compelling and realistic, and the other characters are economically drawn but memorable and real as well. I found the suspense almost painful at points - because I cared about these characters.
I think I would have been a bit at sea as to who everyone was and why I cared if I hadn't read The Siege -- this should be more explicitly marketed as a sequel. And I'd love to read another book about this family...
May 9, 2014
Helen Dunmore’s THE BETRAYAL brings to mind the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn as she tells the story of a physician and nursery school teacher who get caught up in the Stalinist paranoia that existed in the Soviet Union following World War II until Stalin’s death in March, 1953. The chronological parameters of the book are the Nazi siege of Leningrad during the war culminating in the Doctor’s Plot where Stalin and his henchman dreamed up a conspiracy of Jewish physicians who were bent on killing the Soviet leadership as these supposed Zionists worked with the CIA to destroy the Soviet leadership. Thankfully Stalin died in the midst of this fantasy and many historians believe his death avoided a second Holocaust for the Jewish people. The novel concentrates in the year 1952 with flashbacks to the World War II siege. Immediately, Dunmore provides insight into the plight of the average Russian citizen following the war. There are references to the lack of husbands reflecting the massive death toll of Soviet soldiers during the war. Communal apartments reflect the lack of housing after the war due to the destruction from Nazi bombing. The paranoia of the Stalinist state is rampant as anyone can be destroyed and no one is irreplaceable as “anyone can go out of favor in the blink of an eye.” (11) When Kolya, a sixteen year old boy eats his food he wraps his arms around the bowl, exhibiting the fear that someone will steal his supper as occurred during the siege. Repeatedly as the story is developed characters express the fear that if one of them is arrested, the rest of the family is in danger as occurred during the “Great Purge” of the 1930s.
In living our lives we believe in certain assurances; the sun will rise and set at the prescribed hour, we will not grow hungry; we will have shelter and be able to rest when needed. What life does not prepare us for is to live in a state of suspended animation were by we lose all control of our freedoms. In post-war Russia life is a riddle that the accused cannot solve. Innocent people become prisoners of this riddle like Andrei, a physician, and his wife Anna, a nursery school teacher. The riddle is played out as Andrei is manipulated into taking on a patient named Gorya, the son of a MGB officer named Volkov who is high up in the state security apparatus. Gorya, a ten year old boy suffers from cancer and after his leg is amputated the cancer spreads and his father needs a scapegoat, a Jewish doctor. Unaware of the coming Stalinist persecution of Jewish doctors Andrei, who is not Jewish gets swept up in the Soviet prison system, but first he has to untangle the riddle, a phone call he receives early in the morning from his hospital’s medical personnel, “I am to inform you that, with immediate effect, you are suspended from your duties, pending investigation of serious irregularities. You are to hold yourself available for investigatory interview without notice. You are not permitted to enter hospital precincts during the period of investigation.” (195) Andrei’s journey through the Stalinist legal system begins with that phone call and will culminate in his imprisonment in the Soviet Gulag. Along the way the reader becomes a member of Andrei’s family and a witness to Andrei’s imprisonment, interrogation, and beatings. The fears of his wife Anna and other characters are explored as we witness the world of Stalinist persecution that is right out of the works of Solzhenitsyn and the likes of the poet, Osip Mandelstam. For Andrei and Anna what is worse; the experiences of the siege of Leningrad with its starvation and constant death during the “great patriotic war,” or the very real fear that the loud banging on the door in the middle of the night will result in a trip to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow.
Dunmore does a remarkable job developing her story and plotline keeping the reader fully engaged. Her character development is impeccable and she posses a sound knowledge of Soviet history from the purges of the 1930s through Stalin’s death. If you have read Solzhenitsyn’s CANCER WARD or THE FIRST CIRCLE, Dunmore’s work fits that genre. If not and you are interested in reading a historical novel that you will become totally engrossed in and not be able to put down, THE BETRAYAL is an excellent choice.
I am listing a short bibliography for those who are interested in this period of history and might like to read further;
For books on Stalin see STALIN: THE COURT OF THE RED STAR by Simon Sebag Montefiore; STALIN by Adam Ulam; STALIN by Robert Service; STALIN by Edvard Radzinsky: STALIN AND HIS HANGMEN: AN AUTHOROTATIVE PORTRAIT OF A TYRANT AND THOSE WHO SERVED HIM by Donald Rayfield.
The purges of the 1930s see THE GREAT TERROR by Robert Conquest and EVERYDAY STALINISM, ORDINARY LIFE IN EXTRAORDINARY TIMES: SOVIET RUSSIA IN THE 1930S by Sheila Fitzpatrick;
For the Soviet prison system (Gulag) see GULAG: A HISTORY OF THE SOVIET CAMPS by Anne Appebaum; INTO THE WHIRLWIND and WITHIN THE WHIRLWIND both by Evgenia S. Ginzburg; THE TIME OF STALIN: PORTRAIT IN TYRANNY by Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko.
The Doctor’s Plot see STALIN’S WAR AGAINST THE JEWS by Louis Rapaport; STALIN’S LAST CRIME by Jonathan Brent and Vladimir Naumov.
For the siege of Leningrad consult LENINGRAD: STATE OF SIEGE by Michael Jones; 900 DAYS: THE SEIGE OF LENINGRAD by Harrison Salisbury; LENINGRAD: THE EPIC SEIGE OF WORLD WAR II, 1941-1944 by Anna Reid; THE FATEFUL SEIGE, 1942-1943 by Anthony Beevor; and Helen Dunmore’s previous novel, THE SEIGE.
In living our lives we believe in certain assurances; the sun will rise and set at the prescribed hour, we will not grow hungry; we will have shelter and be able to rest when needed. What life does not prepare us for is to live in a state of suspended animation were by we lose all control of our freedoms. In post-war Russia life is a riddle that the accused cannot solve. Innocent people become prisoners of this riddle like Andrei, a physician, and his wife Anna, a nursery school teacher. The riddle is played out as Andrei is manipulated into taking on a patient named Gorya, the son of a MGB officer named Volkov who is high up in the state security apparatus. Gorya, a ten year old boy suffers from cancer and after his leg is amputated the cancer spreads and his father needs a scapegoat, a Jewish doctor. Unaware of the coming Stalinist persecution of Jewish doctors Andrei, who is not Jewish gets swept up in the Soviet prison system, but first he has to untangle the riddle, a phone call he receives early in the morning from his hospital’s medical personnel, “I am to inform you that, with immediate effect, you are suspended from your duties, pending investigation of serious irregularities. You are to hold yourself available for investigatory interview without notice. You are not permitted to enter hospital precincts during the period of investigation.” (195) Andrei’s journey through the Stalinist legal system begins with that phone call and will culminate in his imprisonment in the Soviet Gulag. Along the way the reader becomes a member of Andrei’s family and a witness to Andrei’s imprisonment, interrogation, and beatings. The fears of his wife Anna and other characters are explored as we witness the world of Stalinist persecution that is right out of the works of Solzhenitsyn and the likes of the poet, Osip Mandelstam. For Andrei and Anna what is worse; the experiences of the siege of Leningrad with its starvation and constant death during the “great patriotic war,” or the very real fear that the loud banging on the door in the middle of the night will result in a trip to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow.
Dunmore does a remarkable job developing her story and plotline keeping the reader fully engaged. Her character development is impeccable and she posses a sound knowledge of Soviet history from the purges of the 1930s through Stalin’s death. If you have read Solzhenitsyn’s CANCER WARD or THE FIRST CIRCLE, Dunmore’s work fits that genre. If not and you are interested in reading a historical novel that you will become totally engrossed in and not be able to put down, THE BETRAYAL is an excellent choice.
I am listing a short bibliography for those who are interested in this period of history and might like to read further;
For books on Stalin see STALIN: THE COURT OF THE RED STAR by Simon Sebag Montefiore; STALIN by Adam Ulam; STALIN by Robert Service; STALIN by Edvard Radzinsky: STALIN AND HIS HANGMEN: AN AUTHOROTATIVE PORTRAIT OF A TYRANT AND THOSE WHO SERVED HIM by Donald Rayfield.
The purges of the 1930s see THE GREAT TERROR by Robert Conquest and EVERYDAY STALINISM, ORDINARY LIFE IN EXTRAORDINARY TIMES: SOVIET RUSSIA IN THE 1930S by Sheila Fitzpatrick;
For the Soviet prison system (Gulag) see GULAG: A HISTORY OF THE SOVIET CAMPS by Anne Appebaum; INTO THE WHIRLWIND and WITHIN THE WHIRLWIND both by Evgenia S. Ginzburg; THE TIME OF STALIN: PORTRAIT IN TYRANNY by Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko.
The Doctor’s Plot see STALIN’S WAR AGAINST THE JEWS by Louis Rapaport; STALIN’S LAST CRIME by Jonathan Brent and Vladimir Naumov.
For the siege of Leningrad consult LENINGRAD: STATE OF SIEGE by Michael Jones; 900 DAYS: THE SEIGE OF LENINGRAD by Harrison Salisbury; LENINGRAD: THE EPIC SEIGE OF WORLD WAR II, 1941-1944 by Anna Reid; THE FATEFUL SEIGE, 1942-1943 by Anthony Beevor; and Helen Dunmore’s previous novel, THE SEIGE.
October 6, 2011
In The Siege, her novel set during the 900 day siege of Leningrad, Helen Dunmore created a can’t-look-away portrait of a city and people in unimaginable circumstances. Her map of motives, loyalties and escalating struggle is spellbinding. Now Dunmore has brought us a sequel to that excellent novel, The Betrayal. This new book is the next chapter in the lives of Anna, Andrei and Kolya.
The Betrayal is set ten years after the end of the siege. Anna, the daughter of a dissident writer, and Andrei have married and are raising Anna’s little brother the now teenaged Kolya. Anna works in a daycare, Andrei is a pediatrician and Kolya is sullen. It is spring, Leningrad has been rebuilt and replanted but Stalin is still in power so everyone still lives in fear. During the siege you feared Germans, starvation and freezing to death now you fear your neighbors, your hopes and your government.
The plot in The Betrayal is touched off by a sick boy, Gorya. He is brought into the hospital where Andrei works. The boys’ symptoms coupled with his parentage set off warning signals for the first doctor who examines him and he is palmed off on the dedicated and too politically trusting Andrei. Gorya’s father is a powerful man in the government and party, Volkov. It is Andrei who has to tell Volkov and his wife the bad news. Gorya has cancer. His leg will need to be amputated but even that extreme is no guarantee that Gorya will recover. So the stage is set of the collapse of the fragile safety Anna’s family has enjoyed.
The research behind The Betrayal is meticulous. Dunmore uses it wisely to escalate the action in the novel and not to hit you over the head with facts. The day to day details of her characters lives, jobs and of Leningrad are all intriguingly laid out within the history of the period to recreate this world of suspicion. Dunmore shows us that her characters have already seen the worst life has to offer and are now willing themselves to believe that this fear filled everyday can be normal.
The one weakness in The Betrayal is the unassailable goodness of Anna and Andrei. It’s not quite believable to see these survivors of the siege as emotionally stable as Dunmore portrays them to be. This makes everything in the story a little less complicated than it could be.
The Betrayal is an intelligent and captivating novel. Helen Dunmore writes with an effortless clarity that belies her research and careful plotting. You certainly do not have to have read The Siege to enjoy this new novel but if you do (Or have!) then the journey of Dunmore’s characters is that much more absorbing!
The Betrayal is set ten years after the end of the siege. Anna, the daughter of a dissident writer, and Andrei have married and are raising Anna’s little brother the now teenaged Kolya. Anna works in a daycare, Andrei is a pediatrician and Kolya is sullen. It is spring, Leningrad has been rebuilt and replanted but Stalin is still in power so everyone still lives in fear. During the siege you feared Germans, starvation and freezing to death now you fear your neighbors, your hopes and your government.
The plot in The Betrayal is touched off by a sick boy, Gorya. He is brought into the hospital where Andrei works. The boys’ symptoms coupled with his parentage set off warning signals for the first doctor who examines him and he is palmed off on the dedicated and too politically trusting Andrei. Gorya’s father is a powerful man in the government and party, Volkov. It is Andrei who has to tell Volkov and his wife the bad news. Gorya has cancer. His leg will need to be amputated but even that extreme is no guarantee that Gorya will recover. So the stage is set of the collapse of the fragile safety Anna’s family has enjoyed.
The research behind The Betrayal is meticulous. Dunmore uses it wisely to escalate the action in the novel and not to hit you over the head with facts. The day to day details of her characters lives, jobs and of Leningrad are all intriguingly laid out within the history of the period to recreate this world of suspicion. Dunmore shows us that her characters have already seen the worst life has to offer and are now willing themselves to believe that this fear filled everyday can be normal.
The one weakness in The Betrayal is the unassailable goodness of Anna and Andrei. It’s not quite believable to see these survivors of the siege as emotionally stable as Dunmore portrays them to be. This makes everything in the story a little less complicated than it could be.
The Betrayal is an intelligent and captivating novel. Helen Dunmore writes with an effortless clarity that belies her research and careful plotting. You certainly do not have to have read The Siege to enjoy this new novel but if you do (Or have!) then the journey of Dunmore’s characters is that much more absorbing!
May 31, 2025
At some point in my early GR career (pre-Amazon, mind you), I was obsessed with either Russia or someone on this site who was obsessed with Russia. It explains some of my earliest digital shelvings, including this one and its sequels, as well as perhaps my failure to sustain this interest, or at least what I had for those first early investments (Solzhenitsyn being the most glaring example: one four star read in 2012, yet the other three works added around that time remain unread). For, unfortunately for this work, my interest in Russia is grounded in its relations with the United States, but in the substantive sense of nation building of these two nuclear powers, where one managed to chop down its ivory tower and one did not. That means I not only read Ginzburg's Journey into the Whirlwind and continue to search for its sequel, but also Goldman's two part Living My Life, Gilmore's Golden Gulag, and myriad articles, think-pieces, and historical analyses to understand how much more I have in common with those workers across the Pacific than I do with the oligarchs who pay their cops and their armies to protect their property on both sides of the Mariana Trench. So, to come to this book, little more than a WASP fairy tale bloated on white oppression, was rather tedious, and the dragged in cancer plot didn't help me get through the first month of my own life post-cancer diagnosis. In any case, if you read the first book and want some closure with the sequel, that's a completely valid reason to read it. I just would've been better off with some of the less sensationalist titles listed in the bibliography.
June 25, 2016
Dunmore is a mixed author for me: for all her intelligence, historical research and rich imagination I have often found her books oddly cold and unemotional - but not this one. Written with intensity and integrity, this is a brutal story of love and survival in Stalinist Russia which I read with a sense of dread throughout.
This continues the story of Anna and Andrei from The Siege but is a stand-alone novel. It's often difficult to write morally good characters without them becoming saccharine but Dunmore pulls it off here and, without a tinge of sentimentality or `romance', makes the love and terror felt between Anna and Andrei tangible in this book.
A lesser writer might have made the KGB man, Volkov, a monster - Dunmore makes him terrible, certainly, but also a man with a profound love for his son and a concern for his wife. Even the potential cliché of the 2am knock on the door is rendered here as if for the first time.
I've read some of the standard sources that Dunmore quotes in her bibliography (Ginzberg, Mandelstam, Figes) but this novel affected me more deeply than any of them. This is a book where I was so deeply invested in the relationship, future and outcome of Anna and Andrei's story that I was reading the end with a palpable sense of dread - and Dunmore keeps us hanging on till the very last line!
So a brilliant, harrowing, atmospheric read that left me feeling that I, too, have lived through the last years of Stalin's regime - I can't recommend this highly enough.
This continues the story of Anna and Andrei from The Siege but is a stand-alone novel. It's often difficult to write morally good characters without them becoming saccharine but Dunmore pulls it off here and, without a tinge of sentimentality or `romance', makes the love and terror felt between Anna and Andrei tangible in this book.
A lesser writer might have made the KGB man, Volkov, a monster - Dunmore makes him terrible, certainly, but also a man with a profound love for his son and a concern for his wife. Even the potential cliché of the 2am knock on the door is rendered here as if for the first time.
I've read some of the standard sources that Dunmore quotes in her bibliography (Ginzberg, Mandelstam, Figes) but this novel affected me more deeply than any of them. This is a book where I was so deeply invested in the relationship, future and outcome of Anna and Andrei's story that I was reading the end with a palpable sense of dread - and Dunmore keeps us hanging on till the very last line!
So a brilliant, harrowing, atmospheric read that left me feeling that I, too, have lived through the last years of Stalin's regime - I can't recommend this highly enough.
December 18, 2010
In her latest novel, The Betrayal, Helen Dunmore returns to the Soviet Union, and to the city of Leningrad whose history she so powerfully evoked in her best-seller The Siege. Now, a decade later, starvation and bitter cold have been replaced with fear and suspicion, as the people of Leningrad do their best to keep their heads down and their lives unremarkable in an era of accusations, arrests and the midnight knock at the door.
Anna and Andrei have survived the siege, married and together have brought up Anna's brother Kolya. They want their lives to be ordinary - but when the son of a senior secret police official is admitted to the hospital where Andrei is a paediatrican, Andrei finds himself outmanoeuvred by the more politically astute and face to face with a man who has the power to destroy him and his family.
Helen Dunmore's evocative portrait of one couple living in the shadow of Stalin conveys both the sense of all pervading menace, from neighbours, from colleagues, from the state, and the struggle to remain humane and true in the face of it. As the net tightens around Andrei and his life becomes the stuff of nightmares, she also tells a compelling and page-turning tale.
Helen Dunmore is a novelist and short story writer whose many works include 'A Spell of Winter', winner of the Orange Prize and 'The Siege' which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Orange Prize and has sold over 100,000 copies.
Anna and Andrei have survived the siege, married and together have brought up Anna's brother Kolya. They want their lives to be ordinary - but when the son of a senior secret police official is admitted to the hospital where Andrei is a paediatrican, Andrei finds himself outmanoeuvred by the more politically astute and face to face with a man who has the power to destroy him and his family.
Helen Dunmore's evocative portrait of one couple living in the shadow of Stalin conveys both the sense of all pervading menace, from neighbours, from colleagues, from the state, and the struggle to remain humane and true in the face of it. As the net tightens around Andrei and his life becomes the stuff of nightmares, she also tells a compelling and page-turning tale.
Helen Dunmore is a novelist and short story writer whose many works include 'A Spell of Winter', winner of the Orange Prize and 'The Siege' which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Orange Prize and has sold over 100,000 copies.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 28, 2020
What a read! Following on from The Siege, this takes place after the war, during the very early 50s. Anna and Andrei are building a life in Leningrad, in the waning of that terrible and sinister Stalinist regime, when Andrei, a doctor, is asked to cure the son of one of the top secret police officers of cancer. He is very aware that should the the boy die, he will be blamed and in very deep trouble from reprisals. Helen Dunmore has really brought the merciless paranoia of the age alive - where people betray friends and family to save themselves, with ghastly retributions handed out for the slightest infraction, real or imagined. This is a harrowing read at times, but nevertheless very moving.
April 18, 2022
This was very evocative of the fear in Stalin's Russia. I believe it is a sequel, I haven't read the previous book, but was still able to understand the story and relate to the characters. I will be looking for the first book now.
March 31, 2021
A superbly written historical novel. Wonderful stories, great characters and a lot of tension and drama. A pleasant surprise.
8/10
8/10
December 11, 2023
Not what i expected - terrifying. The tension got worse as i read on. Excellent
September 25, 2010
The Betrayal is set in Stalin's USSR, beginning in 1952. The story focuses on a couple, Andrei, a doctor and Anna, who teaches at a nursery school. Andrei and Anna spend their days trying to do what everyone else in that period of time tried to accomplish (with varying degrees of success): to keep a low profile while going about their daily work and home lives. It is becoming increasingly difficult for Andrei and Anna and Anna's younger brother Kolya to do so -- at home, they attract the wrath of their neighbors when Kolya plays the piano and at work, Anna has been told she needs to advance herself by taking some courses at the university. This is not such a bad thing, but Anna's got secrets that a check on her family background might uncover, and she doesn't want to risk coming to someone's attention. Andrei also goes through his normal daily routine at work, but trouble still manages to raise its ugly head when a colleague of his requests that he take a look at a very ill boy. As it happens, the boy's father is none other than Volkov, who is one of the highest officers of the Soviet secret police. Andrei realizes that he is in a most untenable position, especially when it turns out that Volkov's child needs immediate treatment for cancer. Although everyone he knows tells him to walk away, he finds that he cannot -- with some rather unsettling consequences.
I liked it, but I wasn't wowed, unlike everyone else who seems to have fallen in love with this book and given it 4+ stars. I know I am the lone stranger here, but I can't help it. It's not really the author's fault -- it's just that the story was a bit too light for my taste, not as much of an in-depth look at this period as I would have hoped for. Dunmore is a skilled writer, but if I were going to recommend fiction about life under Stalin, I think I'd go with Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle, Platanov's The Foundation Pit, Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate and Shalamov's Kolyma Tales. But if you like your historical fiction on the lighter side, then you'll probably love The Betrayal.
I liked it, but I wasn't wowed, unlike everyone else who seems to have fallen in love with this book and given it 4+ stars. I know I am the lone stranger here, but I can't help it. It's not really the author's fault -- it's just that the story was a bit too light for my taste, not as much of an in-depth look at this period as I would have hoped for. Dunmore is a skilled writer, but if I were going to recommend fiction about life under Stalin, I think I'd go with Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle, Platanov's The Foundation Pit, Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate and Shalamov's Kolyma Tales. But if you like your historical fiction on the lighter side, then you'll probably love The Betrayal.
August 20, 2011
I have to admit that Helen Dunmore can do no wrong where I'm concerned. The Betrayal picks up on the story of Andrei and Anna in post-war Stalinist Leningrad. I was impressed by the way Dunmore worked the earlier novel, The Siege, and her evocation of the sensations of hunger and cold that formed the background to Leningrad during the siege of 1941/2, and this later tale is equally impressive.
The reader is sucked into the story of the young couple, and those around them. I found myself reading the book as if I were also waiting for that dreaded knock on the door. The fear and tension are palpable, as are the feelings of living under a totalitarian regime, where people can be arrested and accused of non-existent crimes merely because of the delusions of a paranoid dictator and the machine that grinds away under his wheels. It's a story that makes you care desperately about the characters it depicts, even the less sympathetic ones, as you're aware that everybody is a victim, even those who appear to wield power.
Dunmore researches and writes meticulously; you will feel as if you are in cold war Russia, struggling to survive and maintain your dignity.
The reader is sucked into the story of the young couple, and those around them. I found myself reading the book as if I were also waiting for that dreaded knock on the door. The fear and tension are palpable, as are the feelings of living under a totalitarian regime, where people can be arrested and accused of non-existent crimes merely because of the delusions of a paranoid dictator and the machine that grinds away under his wheels. It's a story that makes you care desperately about the characters it depicts, even the less sympathetic ones, as you're aware that everybody is a victim, even those who appear to wield power.
Dunmore researches and writes meticulously; you will feel as if you are in cold war Russia, struggling to survive and maintain your dignity.
February 6, 2017
Continuing her novel 'The Seige' (of Leningrad), with all the shocking privations of a trapped population, Dunmore's characters Andrei, a young specialist in juvenile arthritis and wife Anna, a nursery school teacher are living in the merciless regime under Stalin's Ministry of Social Security. Terror has been exchanged for starvation. Her writing might be a bit clunky at times, but her characterisation is vivid, and she achieves some excellent narrative tension. No one is immune or safe.
February 28, 2022
I read this book , as it is the follow up to The Siege which I had really enjoyed and felt really invested in the characters. As in the previous book, Dunmore has so captured the the suffering and conditions of living in this precarious place and time. The Siege being over, those having survived were expecting to go back to how St Petersburg previously, however rules had been tightened and there was a constant fear of infringing those rules. Anna and Andrei remained in their apartment along with Anna's brother Kolya. Anna working at the children's nursery and Andrei at the hospital, while Kolya was still at school awaiting his exams. Believing that all was well and there biggest problem was from close neighbours who constantly complain about the noise of Kolya playing the piano. Then suddenly, Andrei is asked to examine the son of one of the powerful prominent figures of Stalin's regime. One of the hospital's doctors had already examined the boy, but didn't like what he had found, so decided it was better to pass the case to someone else, that someone being Andrei. As this author had captured the atmosphere of the Siege, so she captures the fear and horror of this time, in this place.
March 27, 2018
QUITE DEPRESSING
This is not a book to pick up if you are feeling depressed. Set in 1952 in post WW II Russia life under Stalin was hazardous as people fought to survive. It was a time when the poets, writers and artists had been condemned and killed or sent to the camps in Siberia. Stalin then focused on the medical profession and many doctors also suffered the same fate.
The Betrayal centres round a doctor who is called to treat the chronically sick son of an important member of the government. He is caught between the dangers of refusing the case and failing to cure the boy and the oath he took when he became a doctor.
The scenes are well described, the scenes come to live but the end was a disappointment, and there were several lose ends which were not tied up. I failed to see the relevance of the title and I’m still puzzling about that. Disappointing read from a writer whose awards and biography suggested a very special book.
This is not a book to pick up if you are feeling depressed. Set in 1952 in post WW II Russia life under Stalin was hazardous as people fought to survive. It was a time when the poets, writers and artists had been condemned and killed or sent to the camps in Siberia. Stalin then focused on the medical profession and many doctors also suffered the same fate.
The Betrayal centres round a doctor who is called to treat the chronically sick son of an important member of the government. He is caught between the dangers of refusing the case and failing to cure the boy and the oath he took when he became a doctor.
The scenes are well described, the scenes come to live but the end was a disappointment, and there were several lose ends which were not tied up. I failed to see the relevance of the title and I’m still puzzling about that. Disappointing read from a writer whose awards and biography suggested a very special book.
December 1, 2021
Gripping
This is the third Helen Dunmore book I’ve read in the last few weeks and I now have a better sense of her style. She uses a long detailed lead in to the real drama. Some may find these slow burn starts off-putting, I know I needed to persevere. But every time I’m rewarded in the end. In Betrayal it is necessary to work through layers of detail, characters, location, and circumstances but when the threat which has been seeded right from the beginning becomes a frightening reality, it is truly terrifying, horrifying and in some places sickening. I noticed a couple of reviews marking this book down because they found it depressing. And I suppose if you only read fiction for a laugh then this book isn’t for you. But I think that misses the point of reading fiction. At its best it allows us to experience other people’s lives and cultures, and so broaden one’s understanding. Set in Russia after the siege of Leningrad and based on what was really happening in that country it is worth every minute of reading.
This is the third Helen Dunmore book I’ve read in the last few weeks and I now have a better sense of her style. She uses a long detailed lead in to the real drama. Some may find these slow burn starts off-putting, I know I needed to persevere. But every time I’m rewarded in the end. In Betrayal it is necessary to work through layers of detail, characters, location, and circumstances but when the threat which has been seeded right from the beginning becomes a frightening reality, it is truly terrifying, horrifying and in some places sickening. I noticed a couple of reviews marking this book down because they found it depressing. And I suppose if you only read fiction for a laugh then this book isn’t for you. But I think that misses the point of reading fiction. At its best it allows us to experience other people’s lives and cultures, and so broaden one’s understanding. Set in Russia after the siege of Leningrad and based on what was really happening in that country it is worth every minute of reading.
November 5, 2023
This is not a comfortable read but a compelling one. The siege of Leningrad may be over but life is dangerous in Stalin’s regime. The fear in which people live, day in day out, having to watch every single thing they say and do, is powerfully portrayed. The sense of dread is palpable. For me, the psychological trauma is even more distressing than the descriptions of the ‘interrogations’. I was interested to discover that the ‘doctors’ plot’, central to the story, was based on real events.
When I downloaded this book I saw nothing that indicated that this was in fact the second in a series. Thankfully it worked as a stand-alone novel though. I will definitely read ‘The Siege’ at some point but expect that will be even more gruelling.
When I downloaded this book I saw nothing that indicated that this was in fact the second in a series. Thankfully it worked as a stand-alone novel though. I will definitely read ‘The Siege’ at some point but expect that will be even more gruelling.
February 23, 2025
A powerful, accomplished novel about ordinary people living in Stalin's Russia. I found much of this painful to read. The characters are intimately and lovingly drawn, and their plights are terrifying. I became hugely grateful to be living in a liberal democracy, for all its imperfections - and to have such a comfortable material existence. As I was reading, I thought of it as a historical novel. But then today I woke up to the news that Elon Musk - head of a new 'Department of Government Efficiency' - sent emails on Saturday afternoon to all government employees, demanding that they list their accomplishments over the past week or resign.
December 16, 2021
This book is set in Leningrad and a sequel to Dunmore’s The Seige, which I loved. I wonder what happened here, everyone, everything was flat - there was only suspicion and fear.
Set in Leningrad in 1952, the context is just so suffocating-ly fearful that I could just about make it halfway.
I hate not finishing books, so I finally managed to pick up and skim read to the end, which had an unsatisfactory ending too. There’s so much to be fearful of, with not any one moment that I felt gave me a break from the constant fear.
Set in Leningrad in 1952, the context is just so suffocating-ly fearful that I could just about make it halfway.
I hate not finishing books, so I finally managed to pick up and skim read to the end, which had an unsatisfactory ending too. There’s so much to be fearful of, with not any one moment that I felt gave me a break from the constant fear.
July 16, 2021
This is a brilliant read. It is set in Leningrad in 1952 and follows the life of a doctor and his wife and her brother. Every page brings a new problem and you can’t put the book down wanting to know how it can be resolved. Fantastic description of the time and place. I couldn’t believe the way neighbours treated each other but realise it was a totally different regime. You must read it.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 344 reviews