Thus month, the Village Literary Club will read Simon Parkin's The Forbidden Garden: The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice (2024, 300 pp without notes).

The Forbidden Garden is about the brutal siege of Leningrad by Nazi forces. It focuses on the Plant Institute, the world's greatest seed bank, and the dilemma the Plant scientists faced as the city faced starvation. The Times reviewer calls this book a "cinematic telling" of this terrible siege, in which Parkin himself wrestles with the choices the Russian scientists made.