Valery Petrochenkov 
Ash 

This novel provides a biosketch of the City of St. Petersburg in Russia, then Leningrad, during and shortly after World War II. During the Siege of Leningrad, at least one million people died of disease, starvation, and the effects of war. Soviet propaganda has consistently framed the Siege as heroic resistance to Fascism, which has encouraged most accounts to emphasize the strength and resilience of the Russian people, and not the accounts of their great suffering The truth regarding actual conditions in this City cannot be easily conveyed, but this novel. cuts through to the essence of the events. Survivors of the Siege, who have read the book in the original Russian, have expressed the opinion that is the best account of the Siege they have ever read.

The novel describes different aspects of survival and non-survival during the Siege. A child narrator, whose early vocabulary includes words such as bombyoshka (bombing), relates the events in several chapters. The childs frank appraisal allows the reader to penetrate to the very core of reality in a city where bombs are falling, dead bodies line the streets, and simple joys still exist in a narrow context. Each additional chapter reveals one more perspective.

Über den Autor

Valery Petrochenkov was born in Russia in 1940. The first year of his life was spent in a Soviet military base on the Hanko Peninsula in Finland. In August of 1941 all families of military personnel were evacuated to Leningrad, right before the beginning of the Siege of Leningrad. His father died during the defense of the military base on December 3, 1941.
He graduated from the Department of Journalism of Leningrad State University in 1967 and after emigration to the United States in 1974, acquired his master’s degree from the University of Colorado and his Ph.D. from Indiana University.
He taught at Georgetown University for 23 years and retired in 2005 as a Professor Emeritus. He is the author of more than 10 books of poetry, prose, and literary studies. His fictional account of the Siege of Leningrad was first published in Russia in 1998.