Persephone Books publishes one of the great Russian women writers – Eugenia Ginzburg. In a blog last August Esther Harper wrote about Into the Whirlwind: ‘The essence of this book is one innocent woman’s story of life, freedom and affluence being stripped away from her, and replaced with a life where mere survival is the focus – a life where every scrap of bread, every half-cup of dirty water and every fishbone sewing needle is a means of simply carrying on. It is a story of what is left when all she knows and loves is snatched away – what of her remains, what she turns to, and who she becomes.’ We are showing the film (which stars Emily Watson) next week.