The Girl from the Metropol Hotel
by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
Published in 2006 (I finished it on March 30, 2017)

It's a wondrous journey through the early life of the author having to live through deplorable conditions, but somehow managing to keep her sanity and a sense of humor. It begins primarily in the late 1930s with many of her relatives being executed, and continues with her having to deal with no barely any food or clothes. She had to rummage through the garbage to find potato peelings for dinner. Without shoes, she went barefoot from April to September, and then had to stay indoors during the winter. (Suddenly, our "problems” don't seem so bad.)

It's a fast read and offers a stirring example of perseverance through hardship and adversity during a very difficult period in history.

So many books … (you know the rest)