A majestic book, sweeping across history, told through the eyes of its survivors. The Concert is a historical fiction novel based on a true story of what happened during World War II when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union and subjected the city of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) to a siege of 872 days in which the city's three million residents were robbed of food, electricity, heat and dignity. Amid this inhumane treatment by Hitler's army, a group of musicians banded together, many starving themselves, to perform a concert that lifted morale. Many in the audience said they heard in the chords of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 the sounds of their own suffering. The WWII novel is told through the eyes of Olga Berggolts, a poet who meets often with her Poets Circle of female artists, dancers, and writers to chronicle the war, and its lessons. Their musings about the twin horrors of fascism and communism thread the book with a political commentary relevant to our own fraught times. Written during the pandemic by the award-winning journalist Johanna Neuman, this book is offered as a meditation on the strength of the individual to overcome political dictatorship.
