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A review by lkedzie
The Forbidden Garden by Simon Parkin
5.0
In no particular order, the scientists of the Plant Institute of Leningrad had to contend with the persistent Nazi attacks on the city, which damaged the building and the scientists themselves; the people of the city, who were starving and wanted to eat the Institute's collection, what we would now call a seed bank; rats and other vermin, who felt likewise; the cold, which threatened to kill the living treasures; their own hunger, as many would die on their watch; their own government, as the leader of the seed bank had fallen into political disfavor, and their own sense of morality, and whether feeding starving people now was more important than preserving natural history and the possibility that some varietal would prevent famine later.
This is an important story, and is is told well. For being at a particularly grim point in history and a de facto genocide on top of a de jure one, it is an uplifting read. One of the things that works structurally well is separating out the stories of Nikolai Valilov and Heinz Brücher (and William Venables). Too often the story of the former becomes more about his enemies, while the later helps triangulate both that of the scientists and of Valilov in showing the plainly evil as opposed to the more venial opposition elsewhere in the book.
The choice to narrativize the events leads to some weak moments. The history of the institute before Valilov is mostly skipped, which makes some of the comments about how some scientists were motivated to make up for the previous institute's failures lack dimension. Since it is also a history of the Siege of Lennigrad there are odd bits of pacing, like how most of '42 is skipped. This list was longer, until I reached the epilogue, where the author explains how the invasion of Ukraine cut his project short.
My thanks to the author, Simon Parkin, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Scribner, for making the ARC available to me.
This is an important story, and is is told well. For being at a particularly grim point in history and a de facto genocide on top of a de jure one, it is an uplifting read. One of the things that works structurally well is separating out the stories of Nikolai Valilov and Heinz Brücher (and William Venables). Too often the story of the former becomes more about his enemies, while the later helps triangulate both that of the scientists and of Valilov in showing the plainly evil as opposed to the more venial opposition elsewhere in the book.
The choice to narrativize the events leads to some weak moments. The history of the institute before Valilov is mostly skipped, which makes some of the comments about how some scientists were motivated to make up for the previous institute's failures lack dimension. Since it is also a history of the Siege of Lennigrad there are odd bits of pacing, like how most of '42 is skipped. This list was longer, until I reached the epilogue, where the author explains how the invasion of Ukraine cut his project short.
My thanks to the author, Simon Parkin, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Scribner, for making the ARC available to me.