Tatiana was forced to bury her by pushing her body through a small hole in the ice into the waters below.Īlthough at times emotionally draining and gruesome, Simon’s novel manages to celebrate nearly every aspect of this grand and glorious city. Like more than one million civilians and soldiers who perished from starvation, stress, exposure and bombardments during the 900-day blockade, Dasha’s fate was sealed. A starving Tatiana Metanova flees Leningrad, where there is no food or water, electricity, coal or wood, aiming to reach a field hospital on the lake’s opposite shore to save her dying sister, Dasha. Paullina Simons’ best-selling novel The Bronze Horseman depicts a scene involving the Road of Life that shook me to the core. The Bronze Horseman Медный всадник, Saint Petersburg, Russia Here in the winter of 1941 the 219-kilometre ‘Road of Life’, was built on the lake’s 90-150cm thick frozen surface, giving the sick and starving safe passage out of the besieged city of Leningrad, and allowing food and munitions in. From my window seat I had a perfect view of Lake Ladoga. After an early morning flight over Russia’s vast tundra, laid flat like moss-green jigsaw pieces interspersed with connecting waterways and small lakes, we were finally on descent into Leningrad, or Saint Petersburg, as it is once again known as today.
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