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 Alexievich

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.