When Leningrad was under siege in the Second World War and the city surrounded and starving, the production of consumer goods was reduced to the absolute minimum. People ate sawdust, and paper could not be spared to publish literature. The publication of only one book was allowed in 1942: The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen. "It strikes most contemporary Americans as amazing or unbelievable," Norman Berdichevsky claims, "when told that, after The Bible, Andersen's most popular 'fairy tales' are the most translated work in all of literature. Close to two-thirds of them have been translated into more than 60 languages (more than Shakespeare's most popular plays)."