Please Live

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

The heart-wrenching final quarter of Please Live . . . culminates with the story of her mother's assassination and Lana's grief. These passages are painful to read. But if one lesson we have learnt from Russia's barbarism in Ukraine is the importance of empathy, another is that our empathy has limits: far from the front line, we're unlikely to find ourselves feeling the howling anguish, despair and disbelief of someone who has lost loved ones to war. We need accounts like this haunting, compelling book to show us what that feels like, and to understand

Haunting . . . a memoir about growing up during the Chechyan wars

Has much to say about the way Russia seeks to bring the inhabitants of its hinterlands to heel.

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. It is also a moving account of the relationship between a highly-driven mother and her long-suffering daughter . . . She has done her mother proud

Extraordinary