Requiem and Poem Without a Hero

“Translations of the ‘two greatest achievements’ of Akhmatova’s maturity.… A decided addition to any library.”—Choice

With this edition Swallow Press presents two of Anna Akhmatova’s best-known works that represent the poet at full maturity. Akhmatova began the three-decade process of writing “Requiem” in 1935 after the arrests of her son, Lev Gumilev, and her third husband. The autobiographical fifteen-poem cycle primarily chronicles a mother’s wait―lining up outside Leningrad Prison every day for seventeen months―for news of her son’s fate. Similarly, Akhmatova wrote “Poem without a Hero” over a long period. It takes as its focus the transformation of Akhmatova’s beloved city of St. Petersburg―historically a seat of art and culture―into Leningrad. Taken together, these works plumb the foremost themes for which Akhmatova is known and revered. When Ohio University Press published D. M. Thomas’s translations in 1976, it was the first time they had appeared in English. Under Thomas’s stewardship, Akhmatova’s words ring clear as a bell.