From the prize-winning author of Ring of Steel, a gripping history of the First World War's longest and most terrible siege. the siege that unfolded at Przemysl was the longest of the whole war. in the defence of the fortress and the struggle to relieve it austria-Hungary suffered some 800,000 casualties. alexander Watson, prize-winning author of Ring of Steel, has written one of the great epics of the First World War. Comparable to stalingrad in 1942-3, Przemysl shaped the course of europe's future. neither Russians nor austro- Hungarians ever recovered from their disasters. the siege was central to the war itself, but also a chilling harbinger of what would engulf the entire region in the coming decades, as nationalism, anti-semitism and an exterminatory fury took hold.