Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) is not only Russia's finest woman poet but perhaps the greatest in the history of Western culture. *Selected Poems* brings together all D.M. Thomas's acclaimed translations of Akhmatova's poems. It includes 'Requiem', her poem of the Stalinist Terror, which 'belongs to a selected number of sacred texts which, like American Indian dream-poems but for more sinister reasons, were considered too momentous, too truthful, to write down'; and 'Poem Without a Hero', described by Thomas as a 'superimposition of joyous, talented, light-hearted Petersburg upon tormented Leningrad - or vice versa... Akhmatova's love poem to her city'.