> Skip to content
Play sample
  • Published: 14 September 2017
  • ISBN: 9780241316979
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 160

Riot Days




A raw, passionate, hallucinatory account of her time inside Russia's 'justice' system from the Pussy Riot singer and activist

Freedom doesn't exist unless you fight for it every day.

Revolution is history. If we decided to fall out of it, to disappear, that would mean it would not be our history, but theirs. Not our country, but theirs. In this sense, we didn't take off our masks. We never left the church. On a T-shirt, I had written 'To Back Down an Inch is to Give Up a Mile'. I felt there was no sense in wearing a T-shirt with those words if you didn't hold yourself to them.

We have the right to refuse. This is our right, yours and mine. You can't know all the laws by heart; you don't know what will happen if you refuse. But you have to try.

  • Published: 14 September 2017
  • ISBN: 9780241316979
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 160

Praise for Riot Days

Riot Days could so easily have been a straightforward, from-the-horse's-mouth confessional account of one of the most publicised political protests of recent years. Alyokhina takes on a far greater challenge: creating a text that is not just a reflection on a piece of art, but becomes one itself, and one that, in many places, lives up to her own criteria of protest: that it must be "desperate, sudden, and joyous"

Rachel Hewitt, Guardian

Reading: RIOT DAYS, by #PussyRiot member MariaAlyokhina. A women's prison memoir like no other! One tough cookie!

@MargaretAtwood

Urgent and bold

Anna Aslanyan, Financial Times

[An] energetic and enjoyable prison diary ... A search for meaningful protest in an age in which presidents often appear to be playful performance artists

Peter Pomerantsev, Spectator

The literary equivalent of guerrilla street art

Marc Bennetts, The Times

Strong, brave, honest, touching, bitter and sad

Vladimir Sorokin, master of contemporary Russian literature

One of the most brilliant and inspiring things I've read in years. Couldn't put it down. This book is freedom

Chris Kraus, author of 'I Love Dick'

In oppressive political systems, some of the most effective weapons are sarcasm and dark humour. It is exactly these weapons that are employed by Masha Alyokhina in the brilliantly written Riot Days. Once you begin reading, you are completely disarmed, unable to put it down until the last page

Marina Abramovic

Alyokhina's eye for surreal detail gives Riot Days a welcome dose of dark humor ... Through the chinks in the abusive system, Alyokhina glimpses human beings

The New York Times Book Review

A future cult classic

Vogue

Accessible and inspiring

Huck Magazine

Fascinating and important ... What's most striking is its universality

Refinery 29

Iconoclastic

Livres Hebdo