Seventeen year old Lev lives alone in Leningrad. It’s 1942 and the siege is in full swing; Lev’s mother has left the city with his younger sister. Lev’s father, a renowned poet, has been dispatched by the NKVD years ago into an unmarked grave, and so Lev lives alone in his apartment building, with people who share his fate but that aren’t his friends. There is little more to do for Lev than read chess manuals and focus on the all-encompassing hunger he feels. One […]