“It turns out that at home, the colors change from the gases of the blast wave: that’s how a person’s face changes from shock.” Vera Mikhailovna Inber’s diary—she was a Russian poet and translator—tells of the hard days of the war from 1941 to 1944 and fully conveys the tragedy of besieged Leningrad. Suffering legs are from fear when a bomb explodes nearby. Laughter and tears are from happiness when they added 75 grams of bread. The siege diary is the most honest and piercing testimony of that terrible and heroic time…