Lidiya Yakovlena Ginzburg became a literary critic whose importance is only now being recognized. In later life she was an inspiration to the postwar generation of Petersburg poets including Aleksandr Kushner and Joseph Brodsky.

"Behind the Lines" is a remarkable record of intellectual life lived under appalling conditions, but lived to the full. The "Notes", covering almost 60 years, are full of insights into literature, everyday Soviet life and the problems of surviving with integrity in a world where the expression of independent thought was anathema to the regime. The "Memoirs" provide portraits of key literary figures, including Akhmatova, Mayakovsky, Zabalotsky, Mandelstam, Pasternak, the Briks and Oleinikov and also of the important literary movements. The final section contains some of the author's narratives including the "Siege Notebook" about the Leningrad Blockade. Lidiya Yakovlevna Ginzburg was born in Odessa in 1902, and studied in Petersburg/Leningrad under Yury Tynyanov, Boris Eikhenbaum and Viktor Zhirmunsky, three major architects of Russian Formalism, and was regarded as their most gifted pupil. She became a literary critic whose importance is only now being recognized. In later life she was an inspiration to the postwar generation of Petersburg poets including Aleksandr Kushner and Joseph Brodsky. She died in St Petersburg in 1990. The author, Alan Myers, has translated the poetry and plays of Joseph Brodsky, Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" for Oxford University Press and is currently working on "The Faculty of Useless Things" by Yury Dombrovsky for Harvil.