The 900-day siege of Leningrad was one the turning points of the Second World War. It slowed down the German advance into Russia and became a national symbol of survival and resistance. From her own experience of the blockade and using facts, conversations, and impressions collected over many years, Lidiya Ginzburg has created a remarkable everyman hero in whom she distils 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.