Symphony for the City of the Dead
Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad
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Narrated by:
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M. T. Anderson
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By:
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M. T. Anderson
About this listen
In September 1941, Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht surrounded Leningrad in what was to become one of the longest and most destructive sieges in Western history - almost three years of bombardment and starvation that culminated in the harsh winter of 1943-1944. More than a million citizens perished. Survivors recall corpses littering the frozen streets, their relatives having neither the means nor the strength to bury them. Residents burned books, furniture, and floorboards to keep warm; they ate family pets and - eventually - one another to stay alive.
Trapped between the Nazi invading force and the Soviet government itself was composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who would write a symphony that roused, rallied, eulogized, and commemorated his fellow citizens - the Leningrad Symphony, which came to occupy a surprising place of prominence in the eventual Allied victory.
This is the true story of a city under siege: the triumph of bravery and defiance in the face of terrifying odds. It is also a look at the power - and layered meaning - of music in beleaguered lives. Symphony for the City of the Dead is a masterwork thrillingly told and impeccably researched by National Book Award-winning author M. T. Anderson.
©2015 M. T. Anderson, original book published by Candlewick Press (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reservedListeners also enjoyed...
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The leafy Avenue de Foch, one of the most exclusive residential streets in Nazi-occupied France, was Paris' hotbed of daring spies, murderous secret police, amoral informers, and Vichy collaborators. So when American physician Sumner Jackson, who lived with his wife and young son, Phillip, at Number 11, found himself drawn into the Liberation network of the French resistance, he knew the stakes were impossibly high.
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Gripping, inspirational, and informative!!
- By Constance M. Specht on 09-26-15
By: Alex Kershaw
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Swansong 1945
- A Collective Diary of the Last Days of the Third Reich
- By: Walter Kempowski, Shaun Whiteside - translator
- Narrated by: Eric G. Dove, Christine Williams
- Length: 17 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Swansong 1945 chronicles the end of Nazi Germany and World War II in Europe through hundreds of letters, diaries, and autobiographical accounts covering four days that fateful spring: Hitler's birthday on April 20, American and Soviet troops meeting at the Elbe on April 25, Hitler's suicide on April 30, and finally the German surrender on May 8.
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Important, Tragic, Poignant...
- By Amazon Customer on 07-31-15
By: Walter Kempowski, and others
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Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century
- By: Alexandra Popoff
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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If Vasily Grossman's 1961 masterpiece, Life and Fate, had been published during his lifetime, it would have reached the world together with Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and before Solzhenitsyn's Gulag. But Life and Fate was seized by the Russian KGB. When it emerged posthumously, decades later, it was recognized as the War and Peace of the 20th century.
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What? Nazism = communism?
- By James Messelbeck on 06-25-19
By: Alexandra Popoff
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To End All Wars
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- By: Adam Hochschild
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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World War I stands as one of history's most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In a riveting, suspenseful narrative with haunting echoes for our own time, Adam Hochschild brings it to life as never before. He focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war's critics, alongside its generals and heroes. Thrown in jail for their opposition to the war were Britain's leading investigative journalist, a future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and an editor who, behind bars, published a newspaper for his fellow inmates on toilet paper.
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A story of personalities
- By Tad Davis on 06-09-11
By: Adam Hochschild
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Moscow 1941
- A City and Its People at War
- By: Rodric Braithwaite
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
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The 1941 Battle of Moscow, unquestionably one of the most decisive battles of World War II, marked the first strategic defeat of the German armed forces in their seemingly unstoppable march across Europe. The Soviets lost many more people in this one battle than the British and Americans lost in the whole of the Second World War. Now, with authority and narrative power, Rodric Braithwaite tells the story in large part through the individual experiences of ordinary Russian men and women.
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slow, repetitive
- By Wylie on 12-27-06
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Stalin
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- By: Edvard Radzinsky
- Narrated by: David McCallum
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
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The Kremlin intrigues, the private worlds of the Soviet Empire's ruling class, Radzinsky thrillingly brings them to life. And the riddle of that most cold-blooded of leaders, a man for whom nothing was sacred in his pursuit of absolute might, and perhaps the greatest mass murderer in Western history, is solved.
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A Great Book About a Great Tyrant
- By Moon Man on 05-01-05
By: Edvard Radzinsky
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North Korea Undercover
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- By: John Sweeney
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
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North Korea is like no other tyranny on Earth. Its citizens are told their home is the greatest nation in the world, and Big Brother is always watching. It is Orwell's 1984 made reality. Huge factories with no staff or electricity, hospitals with no patients, uniformed child soldiers, and the world-famous and eerily empty DMZ - the Demilitarized Zone, where North Korea ends and South Korea begins - are all framed by a relentless flow of regime propaganda from omnipresent loudspeakers. Free speech is an illusion: one word out of line, and the gulag awaits.
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Highly listenable, humorous and enlightening
- By Kevin Stokes on 09-09-15
By: John Sweeney
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Lenin's Tomb
- The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
- By: David Remnick
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 29 hrs and 6 mins
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In the tradition of John Reed's classic Ten Days That Shook the World, this best-selling account of the collapse of the Soviet Union combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism.
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The moral complexity of a comic book
- By Tot on 02-22-19
By: David Remnick
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Agent Garbo
- The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler & Saved D-Day
- By: Stephan Talty
- Narrated by: Clinton Wade
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
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Before he remade himself as the master spy known as Garbo, Juan Pujol was nothing more than a Barcelona poultry farmer. But as Garbo, he turned in a masterpiece of deception that changed the course of World War II. Posing as the Nazis’ only reliable spy inside England, he created an imaginary million-man army, invented armadas out of thin air, and brought a vast network of fictional subagents to life. The scheme culminated on June 6, 1944, when Garbo convinced the Germans that the Allied forces approaching Normandy were just a feint - the real invasion would come at Calais.
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Good story, writing overly dramatic
- By Matthew on 08-13-13
By: Stephan Talty
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Judgment Before Nuremberg
- The Holocaust in the Ukraine and the First Nazi War Crimes Trial
- By: Greg Dawson
- Narrated by: Gary Dikeos
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
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When people think of the Holocaust, they think of Auschwitz, of Dachau; and when they think of justice for this terrible chapter in history, they think of Nuremberg. Not of Russia or the Ukraine, and certainly not a town called Kharkov. But in reality, the first war-crimes trial against the Nazis was in this idyllic, peaceful Ukrainian city, which is fitting, because it is also where the Holocaust actually began.
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Don’t Insult Your Audience
- By Michael Richards on 01-21-22
By: Greg Dawson
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What listeners say about Symphony for the City of the Dead
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Greg
- 12-06-15
Be a classical music fan. Raw info on WW2, no.
This is a semi biography on a legendary Soviet composer. It is interesting but not for someone who is looking for war specific information on Germany vs the Soviet Union during WW2.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Debby Edwardson
- 01-08-17
Incredibly Moving
A nuanced and thought provoking look at Soviet politics in World War II, at the power of art in the hierarchy of human needs and at the heart of the Russian people. Read movingly by the author himself. Highly recommend.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Tom
- 10-22-15
This book blew me away
Would you listen to Symphony for the City of the Dead again? Why?
I'll have to wait a while until I listen to this again, just because it is so intense. I had to carry tissues while I listened because the tears kept coming, both from sorrow and joy. I usually avoid books read by the author, but MT Anderson did a fantastic job.
Who was your favorite character and why?
The people of Leningrad who inexplicably survived the siege really formed the backbone of the story. Anderson provided a balanced portrayal of the good, the bad and the ugly of ordinary people struggling through unimaginable horror.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The emotional denouement was the performance of the 7th symphony in a starving Leningrad still under siege. People who had been eating wallpaper paste for months found the grace to be moved by a piece of music.
Any additional comments?
This is the kind of book you force on people, begging them to read it just so you can discuss it with somebody. It's technically a young adult book, but I'm middle aged and never found it simplistic. I wish this book could replace To Kill a Mockingbird, which my kids read in high school a few years ago; the possibilities for meaningful discussion are amazing.
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17 people found this helpful
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- Remi Fasolati
- 10-05-15
Great book, amazing story
Wow. An amazing, almost unbelievable story, beautifully told, about Shostakovich and his world. Highly recommend this book. 5 stars. 6 if I could.
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- Ryan Tounsley
- 12-13-23
A gruesome story beautifully written
This books help give you a glimpse of the Russian people. It intertwines the story of one man with an entire nation. Both gloomy and hopeful, the history of this city seems doomed to repeat itself and for its inhabitants to pay the price. This book speaks to the importance of honesty, humanity, and kindness in the face of great evil.
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- Michelle F. Smith
- 09-05-20
very compelling
I enjoyed the book. makes me want to go back in time and kill Stalin.
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1 person found this helpful
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- A. D. Howland
- 02-13-19
The endurance of music
For me, this book presented a new perspective on the historical events as Russia tried to exist as a Communist nation. I am a classical musician and have a strong interest in history. I had studied the era of the Bolshevik revolution and also knew about the role this symphony played during the siege of Leningrad, and this book describes these events well. What really caught my attention, however, was the narrative throughout about how the regime dictated over and over again what was the politically correct form for the arts, and the effect this had on writers, poets, artists, musicians, and composers. I would recommend that this book be included on the syllabus of any history or art history course to bring to students of both an appreciation of the role that all art forms have played since the beginning of everything we know as human beings. The narrator gets a bit excited here and there, but that's understandable.
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- Jeremy
- 04-01-16
Most excellent book I've read in a year
Would you listen to Symphony for the City of the Dead again? Why?
Symphony for the City of Dead takes its listeners back to Russia in the 1940s and lets them feel as if they're experiencing it for themselves.
What did you like best about this story?
I loved the blend of history, humanism, and I enjoyed learning about music.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Bonnie
- 04-28-17
A entertaining education on Shostakovich .
A thoroughly entertaining education of Shostakovich and the devastation reigned on the Russian people by Lenin and Stallin.
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1 person found this helpful
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- David Philip Tener
- 12-21-19
The author is the performer.
His voice is very nice however he has a speech impediment that is very difficult to listen to.
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1 person found this helpful