ARGONAUT BOOKS

Two lovers remain in a gallery of the Hermitage, refusing to shelter underground while Leningrad is under siege. Freezing and gnawed by hunger, they recite poems and stories to pass the time, re-enacting the paintings that are being evacuated from the museum. As their voices and bodies begin to fail and fragment, their conversation is interspersed with sections from a diary - a real document from a person who died during the blockade. This is the centrepiece of 'Living Pictures', Polina Barskova's genre-defying collection of fiction that reckons with the history and aftermath of the siege of L...Read More