The 900-day siege of Leningrad (1941-44) was one of the turning points of World War II. It slowed down the German advance into Russia and became a national symbol of survival and resistance. From her own experience as a survivor of the blockade, and using facts, conversations, and impressions collected over the years, Lidiya Ginzburg has created a remarkable everyman hero in whom she distills the collective experience of life under siege. Though the author may depict, often painfully, the hunger and harrowing conditions of that period, the reader takes away a different impression: the dignity, vitality, and intellectual resilience of the thinking mind as it records and makes sense of extreme experience. This classic work of documentary fiction, reminiscent of the work of Primo Levi and Albert Camus, will be the first introductionof amajor 20th-century Russian writer to many English-language readers."