Dmitry Shostakovich wrote regularly to his close friend Isaak Glikman from the early 1930s to the composer's death in 1975. The collection of 288 letters that form the core of this book start in 1941, when both correspondents were evacuated from Leningrad.The result is a deeply personal biography. It is also a treasury of facts about milestone events in the composer's musical life. But it's the revelations of the composer's deepest feelings and the crippling artistic and moral consequences of living under an ideologically tyrannical regime that make it such a compelling read.
