Osip Mandelshtam, arguably the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century, died in a Stalinist prison camp at the age of forty-seven. It was not his first arrest - he had already been imprisoned multiple times, as well as tortured, exiled, and blacklisted for the criticism of the Soviet state implicit in his verse. And yet many of his poems survived attempted purges - often hidden in the unlikeliest places, and protected at great risk by his friends and admirers.

This volume collects the best of his work, including poems he was unable to publish in his lifetime. Dense and sonorous, his poetry magnificently merges the European past at its best with Russian experience at its worst. Full of light and beauty, bitterness and desolation, Mandelshtam's verse is a powerful expression of the struggle to bear injustice and the poignant dream of a better world.