Book Review: The Forbidden Garden by Simon Parkin (2024)
Synopsis: Founded in 1894 by botanist Nikolai Vavilov, the Bureau of Applied Botany and Plant Breeding had become the world's largest seed bank by the 1940s, housing about a quarter million plant species from different parts of the world Vavilov hoped could be used to prevent famine. However, in 1941, with Vavilov imprisoned by his own government as an accused dissident and the city of Leningrad cut off from the rest of the Soviet Union by the German Army and its residents starving to death, the team of researchers Vavilov assembled are given the nearly impossible task of protecting the seeds from the Nazis, looters, rats and the cold even as they themselves struggled to survive. This non-fiction book tells their story.
Review: I saw The Forbidden Garden advertised by the author on social media and, thinking it sounded interesting, I requested a copy through my local library. As it turns out, it ended up being a book I finished in just a couple days because I couldn't put it down.
More than 80 years after World War II, there is still a lot of information out there about the conflict that has yet to be shared, in part due to the secrets kept during the Cold War. Parkin's book lifts the curtain a bit regarding the Eastern Front of the war by telling the story of these unsung heroes who, even as they slowly starved to death, as were the people around them, were still thinking about a better future.
The challenges they faced were almost unbelievable, whether it was retrieving surviving plants from a bombed-out field (risking their lives in the process) or trying to keep hungry looters from taking the potatoes they were growing in a basement. As Parkin told their story, he also told the story of Leningrad's residents and the specific hardships they faced, things like trading personal effects for a loaf of bread to recovering wood from destroyed buildings so they could stay warm.
The book also has a lot of details about the war itself, especially about the Soviet Union's inadequate logistics and infrastructure that both allowed the Nazis to make quick and decisive advances before slowing them down. I learned a lot about the reasons for laying siege to Leningrad instead of just conquering it and some of the methods the Nazis used to be more effective, such as tricking women into wearing white to make them easier targets.
I also found myself both intrigued and saddened by the impossible choice those botanists were being asked to make. Their seed collection could have potentially saved thousands of lives during the siege but also had the potential to prevent millions from starving in the future. Not caving in, especially since there was no guarantee the seed collection would even survive the war, must have taken an extreme amount of willpower that I'm not sure most people have.
Final Opinion: This is a well-written non-fiction book that tells a story very few people know about and manages to be both inspirational and humbling at the same time. As I said, I couldn't put it down and would highly recommend reading it.
My Grade: A
Book Review: I Marched with Patton by Frank Sisson with Robert L. Wise (2020)
Book Review: Brothers in Arms by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anthony Walton (2004)
Book Review: The Nazi Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch (2022)
Comments
Post a Comment