Please Live
On sale
19th June 2025
Price: £24.99
Genre
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.
‘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.
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Reviews
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
An extraordinarily powerful tribute to her mother . . . and a vivid account of what it is like to grow up in a war zone . . . There is nothing sentimental about this memoir. It is searingly honest
This saddening yet wonderfully brave book is Lana's story of growing up in the not-that-safe space created by her mother, caught between the twin shadows of Putin's killing machine and the torture engines of his Chechen quisling, Ramzan Kadyrovv . . . Please Live is beautifully written and utterly authentic, told through the eyes of a young girl looking out on a world made mad by bad actors.