Please Live

<p><b>A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK </b><br><br><b>'Powerful . . . a coming-of-age story with a twist' </b><i>Guardian</i><br><b><br>'Heart-wrenching . . . We need accounts like this haunting, compelling book'</b> <i>Telegraph</i><br><br><b>'A profound and moving tribute . . . It is Lana's inside perspective on what it was like to grow up within this society that makes this such a unique and powerful </b><b>book'</b> <i>Sunday Times</i><br><br><b>'Wonderfully brave, beautifully written and utterly authentic' </b><i>TLS</i><br><br><b>'Haunting' </b><i>Radio Times<br></i><br>'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. <br><br>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.<br><br><br>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. <br><br>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 safer 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.</p>