Patriot: A Memoir

"Patriot , the posthumously-published memoir by Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny—banned in his home country and denounced as “extremist materials”—has been extremely well received in the west. Here in the UK, it was announced the ‘book of the year’ at the British Book Awards, and in the US the National Book Critics Circle awarded it their top prize for autobiography. When I spoke to May-lee Chai , one of the NBCC judges, about the shortlist, she described it as “the whole package: it tells a compelling story of a man whose life was important and impactful and it’s a very literary book.” Not only that, she added, but “the writing is beautiful! It’s not just a journalistic account of Navalny’s struggles under Putin’s authoritarianism, but it also showcases Navalny’s talent as a writer.” Despite the seriousness of his subject matter, “Navalny writes with surprising humour… He has a sharp eye for irony and characterization, and even when he is imprisoned, he can write about his captors and his experiences with great wit.”"

"Alexei Navalny’s Patriot is the whole package: it tells a compelling story of a man whose life was important and impactful and it’s a very literary book. The writing is beautiful! It’s not just a journalistic account of Navalny’s struggles under Putin’s authoritarianism, but it also showcases Navalny’s talent as a writer. Bravo to the translators because the writing flows very well in English. Yes, I agree. Navalny often writes with surprising humor despite his extreme hardships. He has a sharp eye for irony and characterization, and even when he is imprisoned, he can write about his captors and his experiences with great wit. If publishers continue to embrace the aesthetic and creative diversity of the storytelling that we read last year, then 2025 is going to be a great year!"

"Towards the end of Patriot, Navalny asks what this book is about – for him, personally. Is it an autobiography or is it a monument? It starts as an autobiography of his life: how he grew up, the various military towns he lived in, where he spent his summers in Ukraine, and what the best time he had was. He then goes through his political evolution in Russia, and then the most dramatic pages of the book and most transformative reading is when Navalny writes from prison. It’s his prison diaries. Then, that prison diary turns into his testament, the last words of a person who knows where this is going. Of all the books, Patriot is an example of embodied knowledge that a reader can appreciate. While the autobiographical part of the book is from memory and reconstruction, the prison diaries bring the reader inside that reality. And the main thing that you appreciate as a result of that reading is the strength of the human spirit. By the end, you might even view Navalny as a Jesus Christ ; there are similarities. Jesus Christ took the blame for everyone, he took up all human sins onto his own body. In a way, Navalny is doing the same from a Russian perspective. In order to change his country, he brings himself to the altar and sacrifices his body, but his spirit…I want to cry now…He sacrifices his body but his spirit is there, and his spirit doesn’t die. You see the evolution of that spirit through the prison diary. The pain from the torture that he undergoes is very much on display and affects his writing. There are long silences. There is a changing narrative and towards the end it rises. When it’s his third year in prison and he’s taken to the Arctic as the last stage of his imprisonment and of his torture, you see the rise in that spirit. You could say the whole evolution of the book turns it into a monument to the strength of the human spirit. It is incredibly powerful. It also speaks to the previous book, about the dissidents who were also homegrown, non-conformists who tried to better their country, who didn’t settle for the corruption, for the stagnation, for the hypocrisy, for the poverty, and who were trying to fight the system. Each and every one of them looked at themselves as individuals fighting the system. It wasn’t an organised opposition, it was the circumstances that brought them together. It’s the same with Navalny, where that individual human spirit rises to an incredible degree. That also brings us back to Lucy Ash’s book, The Baton and the Cross . Orthodox belief has a mystical element. There is a lack of rationality, a strength of conviction and spirit that defines orthodoxy as a religion outside its institutionalized and politically implicated nature. You see individuals like Navalny growing out of that Slavic, orthodox, strong-spirited tradition, and it explains the whole story. I do see different books on our shortlist speaking to each other and reinforcing each other. It’s a strong suggestion that you should read all the books, but they will all enrich you. So Patriot, on the one hand, is sad to read, on the other hand, is transformative and illuminating, and gives hope about the strength that an individual can have. Yes, till the very end. The other incredible thing is his appreciation for his wife, Yulia Navalnaya. They stood on the same ground, which was not to focus on your immediate personal family needs, but on the public good. Navalny was sacrificing his wife and his family, but they’re all on the same page. So in prison, when he meets with her, he says, ‘It looks like I might not be able to get out of here.’ And she says, ‘Yes, it looks like it. So let’s continue and not make a drama out of it.’ It’s this non-dramatizing acceptance of the outcome for what they believe in. The book shows the strength that Yulia Navalnaya had and gave to her husband as well. We’re not just talking about Alexei Navalny here, we’re talking about two energies, two individuals coming together and providing each other with the strength that was required to undergo this torturous and sacrificial path."

"One unmissable book is Patriot by Alexei Navalny (1976-2024), the memoir of the Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption campaigner who was poisoned while campaigning in Siberia, made it to Germany for medical treatment and recovered, returned to Russia, was arrested, and was likely killed in a prison in the Arctic Circle. Navalny was a brave man, and despite the tragic end of his challenge to Putin, the memoir is very funny—in a dark, Russian humour kind of way. The tone is colloquial, as if he’s talking and joking with you. He makes fun of everything, including himself. Navalny was an avid reader, so there are lots of references to books and authors. For example, describing falling ill on a flight back to Moscow after being poisoned with Novichok, he writes, “When I am asked what it’s like to die from a chemical weapon, two associations come to mind: the Dementors in Harry Potter and the Nazgûl in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings .” Elsewhere he writes that War and Peace is his favourite book but disagrees with its overall thesis about the irrelevance of individuals to historical events—without Mikhail Gorbachev , he doesn’t believe the Soviet Union would have ended. Navalny goes back through his whole life, so you learn a lot about life in the Soviet Union, about what drove him to politics (the Chernobyl disaster, when he was ten, was a formative experience) and what it means to be an opposition politician in a country that has the trappings of democracy and the rule of law (there are regular elections and Navalny is constantly appearing before judges) but not the real thing. The book is also a love story—of Alexei for his wife, Yulia, as well as for his country, Russia (which he distinguishes from its very poor government down the years). Patriot is the best book I’ve read all year."