I Love Russia

Author Elena Kostyuchenko
Narrator Tiana Yarik
Publisher Random House
Publish Date 30 November 2023
Run Time 14 hours and 18 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Biography and non-fiction prose, History, Nationalism, Political abduction, imprisonment, ‘Disappearance’ and assassination, Political activism, Politics and government, Reportage, journalism or collected columns, Social and cultural history, Society and Social Sciences.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

**WINNER OF THE PUSHKIN HOUSE BOOK PRIZE 2024**

To be a journalist is to tell the truth. Here is Russia as it really is.

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.

'Important ... this is the Russia we need to understand' TIMOTHY SNYDER
'A haunting book of rare courage' CLARISSA WARD
'Read this book' SVETLANA ALEXIVICH
'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*

©2023 Elena Kostyuchenko (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

Brilliant and immersive … reportage at its brave and luminous best

Luke Harding, Observer

Fearless reporting… shocking and moving… This gritty insider’s take on Russia will prove more helpful than the welter of books by western experts when it comes to countering Putin’s disinformation

Sunday Times, *Book of the Week*

I Love Russia is full of rigorous journalistic detail, but is also deeply personal, beautifully written … real and intimate

Rob Hastings, I Paper

Few have tried to examine the life of ordinary people in the world’s biggest country (by physical size) the way this one does … [Elena’s] style of brave, intimate reporting is likely to be a rarity in Russia for years to come

New York Times

Elena Kostyuchenko is an important guide to the twenty-first century. The Russia she recounts here is the Russia we need to understand

Timothy Snyder

Elena’s bravery and reportage are astonishing – the Russia we never see, every page another insight into life under Putin

Christina Lamb, author of Our Bodies, Their Battlefields

A fascinating, frightening, compulsively readable chronicle of life in Putin’s Russia. As a girl, Elena Kostyuchenko wanted to believe in her country; as a journalist she has dedicated her life to exposing its darkness. Her prose is haunting, edgy, searing. Her stories are unforgettable, and deeply important

Carol Off, author of All We Leave Behind

A haunting book of rare courage. Kostyuchenko’s searing reportage takes the reader under the skin of a Russia that few outsiders get to see. With spare, unfliching prose she lays bare the cynicism and corruption, but also the bravery and heart, of her beloved country

Clarissa Ward, author of On All Fronts

Not only does Kostyuchenko find her way into the very darkness, she goes for its blackest corners. . . . The good news that emerges is her talent. Read her. It’s worth it

Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

Would you like to know where Putin comes from? What the Russians are like today? And why? Read this book. For years, the author has been keeping a diary of the soul of her people, with love and with hate. Scientists claim that there is no place in the body where the soul resides. So where is it then? The author goes to homes and schools, sits at weddings and celebrations, asking about love and hate, children and parents. We get to see the rise of the monster that now leaves its footprints in Kyiv, Bucha, and Irpin — and how it forces the whole world to fear the future

Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of Second-hand Time

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