Through much of the twentieth century, Anna Akhmatova's poetry gave voice to the deepest yearnings and struggles of the Russian people. Born in 1889, she survived these upheavals, refusing to abandon either Russia or her craft despite vicious attacks on her name and censorship of her work. When committing poems to paper threatened to cause her arrest, a few close friends faithfully memorised her lines. By the time she died in 1966, Anna Akhmatova was recognized as one of the world's great poets.

We needn't worry again about how to read Akhmatova in translation... the translations are remarkable. Reading this enormous, impeccable book, we watch her work achieve the supreme goal of lyric poetry: to transfigure loss without belittling it, commemorate love without cooling it, and embody the truth of disparate lives in a single self.