Anna of All The Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova,
by Elaine Feinstein

‘Elaine Feinstein's achievement is to show us the life of an extraordinary woman in gleaming fragments, and to demonstrate, through so many witnesses, how she was worshipped.’
Neal Ascherson, The Observer

‘Feinstein is splendidly qualified to add to the story…A fresh informative glimpse of how Akhmatova is seen now,  how she has fared in the thicket of memoirs and revisions which have appeared in the last few decades….   There is fresh information here. There is a strong vivid context provided for the poems. The poems themselves are offered with a clear and clean eloquence. Akhmatova's luck has held.’
Eavan Boland, Irish Times

‘A brilliant new biography…Compulsively readable…Elaine Feinstein has managed to write a biography thata is both scholarly and emotive …As a poet herself, Feinstein is adept at showing  why and how Akhmatova’s unique voice has intoxicated readers.’
Olivia Cole, Independent on Sunday

‘Elaine Feinstein' s   ANNA OF ALL THE RUSSIAS is as absorbing and as comprehensive as was her biography of  Pushkin and as great a revelation of the poet's life.’
Professor John Bayley,  THE LITERARY REVIEW

‘Eminently readable…Akhmatova is a figure that Russians return to again and again.  Feinstein has done English readers a great favor by making Anna Akhmatova's life story, and therefore her poetry,  more accessible to us than ever before.’
Anne Applebaum, THE SPECTATOR

‘Her biographer …..needs adroitness to make space in  one book for all the components of her complicated life, and to find the right focus for such a diffuse and frequently interrupted  career…At the book’s centre is the compelling figure of Akhmatova herself…Not an easy person then, but a grand one and great poet.’
Lucy Hughes-Hallett, The Sunday Times