Han Smith, author
The main book I’ve been reading this month is I Love Russia by Elena Kostyuchenko, translated by Bela Shayevich and Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse. The exiled activist and journalist explains the “love” in the title as being like the love she has for her leg or arm: she has to care about it and react when it hurts, whether she wants to or not. And so the book, now the winner of this year’s Pushkin House book prize, collects Kostyuchenko’s reporting from around Russia in the years of its leadership’s dark and merciless commitment to retaining power at every cost, via media domination, disregard for rule of law, exploitative ultrapatriotism and territorial aggression. But the focus here is on the periphery rather than the centre: on life far from Moscow and St Petersburg.
