Please Live

Lana was born on 3 March 1994 in a dilapidated hospital on the outskirts of Yekaterinburg, Russia, thousands of miles away from Chechnya, the place that would become her real home, a place that was just months away from war. Fifteen years later, her mother was abducted and murdered.

A mountainous slither 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, the Yeltsin Administration, 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. As a member of MEMORIAL, she was intent on exposing the kidnappings, bombings, torture, and murders committed by Russian forces - and by Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen dictator now involved with the Russian army. Working hand-in-glove with Anna Politkovskaya and Stanislav Markelov, amongst many brave others, Natalia Estemirova also wrote for Novaya Gazeta, further focusing the world's attention on what was happening. Tragically, Anna Politkovskaya and Stanislav Markelov were each murdered in retaliation for their work, and on the 15th of July 2009, Natalia Estemirova was abducted from outside her Grozny apartment block and killed.

This is Lana's story of growing up in a war. Of the intense bond between a mother and daughter, navigating a need to be together while knowing that safety meant living apart, 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 she made at her mother's grave.