I Love Russia

**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 ALEXIVICHPart 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* **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 ALEXIVICHPart 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*