It took James Joyce's Ulysses to bring fiction alive to ordinary odours and to make readers feel life at the fingers' ends.

Her canvas is monumental -- the Nazis' 1941 winter siege on Leningrad that killed six hundred thousand -- but her focus is heartrendingly intimate. The Siege is the first of a two-book series.

The book was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2002 and for the 2001 Whitbread Prize. It begins with an outline of the harsh climate there, the almost never-ending winter with a spring that gives false hopes. Called "elegantly, starkly beautiful" by The New York Times Book Review, The Siege is Helen Dunmore's masterpiece. Called "elegantly, starkly beautiful" by The New York Times Book Review, The Siege is Helen Dunmore's masterpiece. Her canvas is monumental - the Nazis' 1941 winter siege on Leningrad that killed six hundred thousand -- but her focus is heartrendingly intimate. Dunmore is at ease when her focus is forced ever more sharply on the domestic interior. She has always written superbly about food, the mundanities of … It is set in Leningrad just before and during the Siege of Leningrad by German forces in World War II. The Siege is a 2001 historical novel by English writer Helen Dunmore. The first two chapters of ‘The Siege’ give a background to Leningrad, some of the main characters, the general situation and act as a prologue, introducing the reader to the scene of the story.