Read more
An unprecedented and intimate portrait of Russia, and fearless cri de coeur for journalism in opposition to the global authoritarian turn To be a journalist is to tell the truth. I Love Russia is Elena Kostyuchenko''s fearless and unrelenting attempt to document Putin''s Russia as experienced by those whom it systematically and brutally erases: sex workers in Moscow, queer people in the outer provinces, patients and doctors at a Ukrainian maternity ward, and reporters like herself. The result is a singular portrait of a nation and a young woman who refuses to be silenced. In March 2022, as a reporter for Russia''s last free press, Novaya Gazeta, Kostyuchenko crossed the border into Ukraine to cover the war. It was her mission to ensure that Russians witnessed the horrors Putin was committing in their name. She filed her pieces knowing that should she return home, she would likely be prosecuted and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Yet, driven by the conviction that the greatest form of love and patriotism is criticism, she continues to write, undaunted and with eyes wide open. I Love Russia stitches together reportage from the past 15 years with personal essays, assembling a kaleidoscopic narrative that Kostyuchenko understands may be the last thing she''ll publish for a long time-perhaps ever. She writes because the threat of Putin''s Russia extends beyond herself, beyond Crimea, and beyond Ukraine. We fail to understand it at our own peril.
About the author
ELENA KOSTYUCHENKO was born in Yaroslavl, Russia, in 1987. She began working as a journalist when she was fourteen and spent seventeen years reporting for Novaya Gazeta, Russia's last major independent newspaper.
In March 2022 she crossed into Ukraine to cover the horrors committed in Russia's name; Novaya Gazeta was shut down in the spring of 2022 in response to her reporting. Returning home now would likely mean prosecution and up to fifteen years in prison.
She is also the author of two books published in Russian, Unwanted on Probation and We Have to Live Here, and is the recipient of the European Press Prize, the Free Media Award, and the Paul Klebnikov Prize.
Ilona Chavasse was born in Belarus and, together with her family, emigrated to the United States in 1989. She has translated three novels by Yuri Rytkheu, including most recently When the Whales Leave, Aleksandr Skorobogatov's Russian Gothic, and Galina Scherbakova's short stories for the Dedalus anthology Slav Sisters, as well as The Village at the Edge of Noon by Darya Bobyleva. She lives in London.Bela Shayevich is a Soviet American writer and translator. She is best known for her translation of 2015 Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich's Secondhand Time, for which she was awarded the TA First Translation Prize. Her other translations include Yevgeny Zamyatin's We and Vsevolod Nekrasov's I Live I See, which she cotranslated with Ainsley Morse. Her writing has appeared in n+1, Jewish Currents, and Harper's Magazine.
