Woman in the Window

by Alma De Groen

In Stalin's Russia, the great poet Anna Ahkmatova is forbidden to write. In a future, denatured world, a young woman, Rachel, searches for what is missing in her life and the sterile world she inhabits. De Groen uses the lessons of a repressive, torturous chapter in history to illuminate an imagined sterile, artless future where the muses and gods of literature and science have virtually sunk without trace. In a world where a 'poet' means a man who researches poetry in the archives, where there is no nature or wildlife and the moon and stars are seen only in a virtual room created by accessing the science archives, Rachel becomes a dispossessed Akhmatova. When the literary archives, which are seldom accessed any more, are about to be switched off and the 'poets' de-listed, Rachel risks her life to save the poetry archives for future generations.

78 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

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[一隻機掰 •ᴥ•ʔ · Rating 5 out of 5]

At night I wait for her,
Sometimes with life hanging by a thread…
What do fame or freedom or even youth matter?
She is my beloved guest, flute in hand.

She comes to me, pushing aside her veil,
And looks at me attentively as I ask her:
‘Were you Dante’s guide when he wrote the Inferno?’
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I was’.