Lena Mukhina was a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl when the German army invaded the USSR in 1941 and besieged her home city of Leningrad. She survived the siege and returned to Leningrad after the war. She died in 1991.
An extraordinary testament to the horrors suffered during the 900-day blockade. * Choice * Heartbreaking ... the innocence set against the reader's terrible sense of impending doom. * Mail on Sunday * Lena's diary, sustained by emotional stamina and driven by daily drama, describes one of the worst civilian horrors of modern wartime. -- Iain Finlayson * The Times *