JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
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Comrades, not colleagues
HENRY BELL is moved by the account of scientists under seige in Leningrad who preferred to starve rather than sacrifice their life-saving work
IMPOSSIBLE CHOICES: A victim of starvation in besieged Leningrad suffering from muscle atrophy, 1941
RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery
GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends a useful book aimed at informing activists with local examples of solidarity in action around the world
HENRY BELL is provoked by a book that looks toward, but does not fully explore the question of who gets to imagine the shapes of cities to come
MATTHEW HAWKINS surveys the upcoming programme of contemporary dance in Glasgow, and picks some highlights
‘Chance encounters are what keep us going,’ says novelist Haruki Murakami. In Amy, a chance encounter gives fresh perspective to memories of angst, hedonism and a charismatic teenage rebel.
The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad
Simon Parkin, Sceptre, £25
IMAGINE being faced with the very real dilemma of whether you should eat your life’s work in order to survive. What if that life’s work was the very struggle against hunger itself. The scientists at the All Union Institute of Plant Breeding faced just this dilemma as they endured the longest and most brutal siege known to humanity, surrounded by the world’s first and greatest seedbank.
In 1941 the Plant Institute in Leningrad – a requisitioned palace filled with every variety of grain, potato, pulse and fodder – was at the heart of a city besieged by the armies of Nazi Germany. For nearly 900 days Leningrad held out against fascism in one of the most crucial stands of the second world war. Simon Parkin has produced a pacy and dramatic account of the Siege of Leningrad, centring on the scientists in the city, and the ordinary and extraordinary decisions they made in order that their work would survive.
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