Riot Days by Maria Alyokhina


Riot Days is written in a style that you almost expect to hear screamed into a microphone at a gig or whispered at an intimate performance poetry event. It tells of the events leading up to the infamous Pussy Riot protest performance in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral and the group’s subsequent arrest, imprisonment and transport to a penal colony from the point of view of Maria Alyokhina, activist, musician, founding member of the Pussy Riot Collective and a former political prisoner.

Riot Days makes for compelling reading, it is a report from a modern day neo-dicatorship and a warning to everyone who takes their freedoms and democratic rights for granted that freedom can be a transitory thing and we need to fight for it in thousands of little ways or we will wake up and find that it is lost.

At its core, Riot Days is about the a little freedom that can never be taken away – the freedom of Choice to stand against the wrongs you see and experience, instead of just putting your head down and accepting them.

It is a blueprint for protest, a step by step guide to standing up to fascism and surviving against the bullying tactics of a police state.

riot days

Riot Days is published by Allen Lane Books and will be available from the 14th September

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