Reviews

"As a first novel, Hunger stands on its own: ...spare, searing... a finely angled vision into hell, a spare portrait of the banality of survival." --Philadelphia Inquirer "A striking debut...a wrenching existential drama that Blackwell handles with spare prose and abundant compassion."--Elle "A riveting fictional account, based on real events... a poignant look at a wrenching period of history."--Chicago Tribune "An exquisite little book ... Blackwell craftily weaves history and botany through this utterly devourable narrative ... a multicolored treat."--Los Angeles Times "A remarkable, fact-based story of heroism and self-sacrifice under the harshest of war's privations [and] of the desperate will to survive... The prose of Hunger is terse, stripped to essentials, but it produces a lilting, nearly poetic quality. The detail is exacting and freshly presented... A compelling exploration of the moral chasm that war can create."-- Bookpage "In Elise Blackwell's original and engrossing short novel, Leningrad during the German siege forms the background for an exploration of love and betrayal, as well as for some richly sensual evocations of the pleasures of eating."--J.M. Coetzee, Booker Prize winning author of Disgrace and Life and Times of Michael K "All the more chilling for its poetic economy, HUNGER captures a sweeping catastrophe through one man's tale of belated conscience. It is a haunting reminder that history has no mercy, that no matter how lofty our circumstances or our ideals, we may be tested terribly at any moment by the times in which we live."--Julie Glass, author of Three Junes "An eccentric, courageous and poetic study of human beings in extremis." --Julia Blackburn, author of The Leper's Companions and Old Man Goya "...a lucid, serene style, which contrasts with her grim subject matter and increases its nightmarish quality...a profoundly disturbing reality."--Wall Street Journal "Insightful and gripping... Hunger examines both the limitations and the possibilities of the human character... Fascinating."--San Francisco Chronicle