http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2015/10/interview_m_t_anderson_the_author_of_the_astonishing_life_of_octavian_nothing.html

Author M.T. Anderson’s two-volume young-adult historical novel The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, about an enslaved boy who ends up fighting for the British during the Revolution, is an erudite, sad, moving, and inventive book. Anderson has just published another historical work for young adults, this one nonfiction. Symphony for the City of the Dead takes the dramatic story of composer Dmitri Shostakovich writing his Symphony No. 7 during the Siege of Leningrad as its starting point. The first volume of Octavian won a National Book Award; Symphony is on the long list for the award this year.