Saint Petersburg
Play sample
  • Published: 24 June 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241741313
  • Imprint: Viking Non Fiction
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:

Saint Petersburg

Sacrifice and Redemption in the City That Defied Hitler

  • Sinclair McKay
Formats & editions
Hardback
24 Jun 2025
EBook
10 Apr 2025
Audiobook
10 Apr 2025
Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Find local retailers Find local retailers Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

From Peter the Great to Putin, a biography of the city Hitler tried to wipe off the map

Built by slave labour in the early years of the eighteenth century, Saint Petersburg was Peter the Great’s so-called ‘window on to Europe’, a city that would outdo all of Europe in its splendour. But a window works both ways, and as bestselling historian Sinclair McKay writes, St Petersburg has always been a city that has drawn Westerners who wanted to see into Russia. It is also a city where much has happened. It was St Petersburg until 1917, Petrograd after the revolution, Leningrad after Lenin’s death in 1924, and St Petersburg once again from 1991.

This biography of a city stretches from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin, who was born and made in St Petersburg. The story centres the ‘900 days and nights’ of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–44. Unlike Paris or Prague, the Nazis weren’t trying to take over, they wanted to wipe it off the map. According to some, this siege of 1.5 million people – including Putin’s mother – was an attempted genocide. Based on first-hand and many unpublished accounts from figures from all walks of life – irascible authors, factory workers, bakers, furriers, dancers, sailors, grandparents, children – this masterpiece reveals the central importance of St Petersburg over the centuries. This is the story of the city told from the perspective of the people who lived there.
  • Published: 24 June 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241741313
  • Imprint: Viking Non Fiction
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:

Praise for Saint Petersburg

Richly-layered and packed with insight, this riveting account of terrible events tells us as much about the present as it does the past

Patrick Bishop, author of Paris '44

The story of the siege of Leningrad is one of the great epics of modern history. It has been told many times before, but never in such an engrossing, moving, often horrifying but also uplifting way

Brendan Simms, author of Hitler

Sinclair McKay has followed up his spellbinding history of Berlin with another tour de force. Saint Petersburg is a riveting account of a beautiful city with a dark soul. Interlaced between descriptions of incredible beauty and decay are such unforgettable tales of cruelty and courage as to make a reader weep or forget to breathe. McKay's magisterial history of Peter the Great’s monumental gift to Russia will become a classic in its own right

Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana

McKay is a gifted writer; his prose has the cadence, tone and power of a Shostakovich symphony. Horror is majestically conveyed

Gerard DeGroot, The Times

Sinclair McKay has followed up his spellbinding history of Berlin with another tour de force. Saint Petersburg is a riveting account of a beautiful city with a dark soul. Interlaced between descriptions of incredible beauty and decay are such unforgettable tales of cruelty and courage as to make a reader weep or forget to breathe. McKay's magisterial history of Peter the Great’s monumental gift to Russia will become a classic in its own right

Amanda Forman, author of Georgiana
penguin pop image
penguin pop image