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**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*

Publisher 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 * Bold, revelatory ... This is remarkable, courageous first-person journalism from a Russian woman who was raised a proud patriot, and now finds herself compelled to tell the awful truth of the country's oppressive authoritarianism under Vladamir Putin * Big Issue * In this sharp-edged debut, Kostyuchenko shares experiences from her harrowing career as a reporter for Novaya Gazeta, a Moscow-based independent newspaper ... Throughout, Kostyuchenko's journalistic integrity is unquestionable and the dangers she faces are very real. It's a vivid and poignant account * Publishers Weekly * Injustice screams out from the tenacious reporting * Times Literary Supplement * Striking and exceptional ... The book can't provide any sudden magic answer to the questions of why Russia has become what it is or how it could foreseeably change, because no one, as far as I know, can do that fully, but its accuracy, honesty and wide-reaching scope certainly make for a significant contribution -- Han Smith * Guardian *