Winner of the Brage Prize 2025
Winner of the Norwegian Booksellers' Prize 2025
Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2026
Putin's Russia silences its citizens, targets foreign journalists and invaded a neighbouring country - while declaring it illegal to say the country is at war. This is what we know from the outside: but what does it feel like on the inside?
The way into this question, for bestselling author and journalist Åsne Seierstad, was young Russian soldier Andrey Medvedev, who defected from the infamous Wagner Group and sought asylum in Norway in January 2023. He was three years old when Putin rose to power and his life story mirrors the transformation of his country. And as Åsne dug deeper into his family and connections, more and more of Russian society opened up to her, from teachers and farmers to reporters and women left behind by soldiers at war.
Drawing upon Åsne's deep knowledge of Russia and her unparalleled access to the country, Never Say War: Life Inside Russia paints an intimate yet epic portrait of a much-mythologized and little-understood country. With Åsne's characteristic eye for narrative and detail, she takes us behind closed doors and illuminates the lives of individuals, helping us think about vital questions: how did present-day Russia come to be? And how are some Russians looking to change the future of their country?
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Azar Nafisi
Moving back and forth in time, mainly between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s, the book follows Nafisi as she returns to an Iran where the English-language classics she loves are increasingly viewed with suspicion by the authorities.An essential book—and a powerful reminder never to take our freedoms for granted, nor to tolerate intolerance.
