Please Live : The Chechen Wars, My Mother and Me

A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK

''Powerful . . . a coming-of-age story with a twist'' Guardian

''Heart-wrenching . . . We need accounts like this haunting, compelling book'' Telegraph

''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 book'' Sunday Times

''Wonderfully brave, beautifully written and utterly authentic'' TLS

''Haunting'' Radio Times

''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 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.