Elena Kozhina's memoir of sacrifices and starvation is a moving tribute to her own mother, who persevered and endured the blockade of Leningrad during the war, and then a horrendous evacuation to the rural steppes of Russia. Kozhina lost her grandmother, a brother and a sister to starvation But her determined mother nursed Elena back from the brink and kept them both not only alive, but brought them the gift of books and art which enriched their bare-bones existence living in a strange and initially hostile village. Always hungry, always exhausted, Kozhina remembers losing herself at the age of 8 through 10 in the works of Lermontov, Chekov, Gogol, Jack London, Twain and James Fenimore Cooper. But the book she remembers most is N.N. Gnedich's GLOBAL HISTORY OF THE ARTS, with its "dense text ... interspersed with illustrations, sometimes glued-in colored inserts, sometimes small drawings." This introduction to art, along with a study of Greek and Roman mythology became a source of wonder and a kind of salvation for the girl. Indeed it no doubt explains how and why she went on to become a noted scholar of such matters.

But this is also a book about deprivation, hunger, and fear of the enemy - the Germans. I found it ironic that I found myself remembering another refugee memoir, Wolfgang W.E. Samuel's German Boy, in which the narrator and his mother were fleeing the advancing Russians across Germany at the end of the same war. Atrocities, barbarity and cruelty came from both sides.

If you enjoy reading personal histories from the Second World War, this slim little volume is well worth your time. ( )