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''Please live'' were the last words fifteen-year-old Lana said to her mother. Shortly afterwards Natalia Estemirova was kidnapped outside their apartment block in Grozny, Chechnya. On 15th July 2009, she was murdered for telling the truth. A mountainous sliver of land which creates a natural boundary between Europe and Asia, for centuries Chechnya had been a sharp bone in Russia''s throat. Three years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, frustrated by the continued presence of the independence movement within Chechnya, Russia invaded. It was a war of extraordinary brutality. It turned Lana''s mother, Natalia Estemirova, from a teacher into a human rights investigator. She became a dedicated member of Memorial, intent on exposing the kidnappings, bombings, torture and murders committed by Russian forces and Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed Chechen President. Natalia Estemirova''s life, assassination, and the impunity that followed it, tell the story of Putin''s Russia. This is Lana''s story of growing up in a war. Of the intense bond between a mother and daughter, desperate to be together even though it was so much safter for Lana to live elsewhere, often for months at a time. It is a book both about being brave and about being ordinary in extraordinary times. It''s the fulfilment of a promise Lana made at her mother''s grave.
About the author
Lana Estemirova was raised in Chechnya. She produces the podcast Trouble with the Truth. Formerly a freelance journalist for the Guardian and the Moscow Times, she has also worked for the Justice for Journalists Foundation, a London-based charity which fights against attacks on the media. Lana studied International Relations at the London School of Economics, and she currently lives in Lisbon with her husband and daughter.
