What is love? One hundred poems, one hundred variations of a single theme, laid out by the greatest Russian poetess of our century: Anna Akhmatova. "The choice of her pseudonym was already the first successful line," writes Russian Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky. "The five open 'A's in Anna Akhmatova had a hypnotic effect and anchored the bearer of this name at the very top of the alphabet of Russian poetry." More successful lines followed in her youth, which form the focus of this sensitively translated collection of poetry. Love, separation, jealousy - these are the themes of these poems, which come across like casually dropped sentences yet testify to a great attention to the tiny details of everyday life. With her ability to express herself lightly and calmly, the poetess unfolds a whole range of emotions in just a few lines.