Anna Akhmatova was a great Russian poet of the 20th century. Lydia Chukovskaya, an admirer who became the poet's close friend, kept intimate diaries that reveal the life of a passionate artist forced to endure sorrow and oppression. This volume contains the journals kept between 1938 and 1941.

A Boswellian portrait of a brilliant Russian poet during the darkest era of Soviet history

Even in her own day Anna Akhmatova was ranked as one of the great Russian poets of the century. Yet she suffered scathing attacks from the Soviet establishment, was famously denounced as "half-nun, half-whore, " and was finally expelled from the Writers' Union. Lydia Chukovskaya, an admirer who became the poet's close friend, kept intimate diaries that reveal the day-to-day life of a passionate artist forced to endure sorrow and oppression, yet still able to create poetry and friendship.