Helen Dunmore

Orange Prize winning author Helen Dunmore reads from and talks about her compelling new novel, The Betrayal.

It is 1952 in war-shattered Leningrad and the doctor Andrei and his wife Anna are struggling to avoid the attention of the increasingly paranoid authorities of a crumbling Stalinist regime.Their efforts to maintain a low-profile and build some semblance of domestic normality are destroyed when Andrei’s treatment of a senior secret police officer’s son throws them into a lethal web of betrayal and personal deceit.

Dunmore’s trademark prose, evocative and compulsive, is used here to devastatingly poignant effect and will make for a very memorable evening.