A bright but naïve young woman marries an egotistical man of letters. The war separates them, and Alaine spends months in turmoil, first imprisoned by the Germans, then a victim of the Russians. Her husband is presumed dead, but she presses on in this autobiographical novel about men’s violence against women. And yet there’s beauty in these pages, and words of hope amid the worst suffering. Una mujer en el frente was first published in 1991, in the midst of Russia’s political transition, and broke the decades-long silence about the wartime injustices suffered by hundreds of thousands of women at the hands of Russian soldiers.