**WINNER OF THE PUSHKIN HOUSE BOOK PRIZE 2024**
To be a journalist is to tell the truth. Here is Russia as it really is.
''Important ... this is the Russia we need to understand'' TIMOTHY SNYDER
''A haunting book of rare courage'' CLARISSA WARD
''Read this book'' SVETLANA ALEXIVICH
Part memoir, part collection of Elena Kostyuchenko’s fearless reporting, I Love Russia introduces us to places we’ve never seen and to people who’ve been systematically, brutally erased from view by Putin’s regime. We enter secretive state-run facilities for disabled people, abandoned buildings haunted by suicide and violence, and a schoolyard marked by unacknowledged massacre. We meet village girls recruited into sex work, queer people in the outer provinces, and patients and doctors on a Ukrainian maternity ward.
The result is a singular, uncompromising, and profoundly humane portrait of a nation - and of an extraordinary woman who refuses to be silenced.
''Shocking and moving ... [a] gritty insider''s take on Russia'' SUNDAY TIMES
''Reportage at its brave and luminous best'' OBSERVER
''Deeply personal, beautifully written'' IPAPER
*A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023*