The Conductor

Longlisted for the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the 2013 Prix Femina, this cinematic and beautifully written novel tells a compelling story about music, survival, friendship and love set against the backdrop of a fierce Russian winter and the Second World War

June 1941: Nazi troops surround the city of Leningrad, planning to shell and starve its people into submission. Most of the cultural elite are evacuated, but the famous composer Shostakovich stays behind to defend his city. That winter, the bleakest in Russian history, the Party orders Karl Eliasberg, the shy, difficult conductor of a second-rate orchestra, to prepare for the task of a lifetime. He is to organize a performance of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, a haunting, defiant new piece that will be relayed by loudspeakers to the front lines.

Eliasberg’s musicians are starving and scarcely have the strength to carry their instruments, but for five freezing months the conductor stubbornly drives them on, depriving those who falter of their bread rations. Slowly the music begins to dissolve the nagging hunger, the exploding streets, the slow deaths . . . But at what cost? Eliasberg’s relationships are strained, obsession takes hold and his orchestra grows weaker. Soon, they are struggling not just to perform but to stay alive.