Riot Days

By: Maria Alyokhina

Narrated by: Kate Lock

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Riot Days by Maria Alyokhina, read by Kate Lock.

From activist, Pussy Riot member and freedom fighter Maria Alyokhina, a raw, hallucinatory, passionate account of her arrest, trial and imprisonment in a penal colony in the Urals for standing up for what she believed in.

'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

People who believe in freedom and democracy think it will exist forever.

That is a mistake. What happened in Russia - what happened to me - could happen anywhere.

When I was jailed for political protest, I learned that prison doesn't just teach you to follow the rules. It teaches you to think that you can never break them.

It's inevitable that the prison gates will open at some point. But this doesn't mean that you leave the 'prisoner' category and go straight into the category of 'the free'.

Freedom does not exist unless you fight for it every day.

This is the story about how I made a choice.

We are all Pussy Riot.
And actions break fear.

'To Back Down an Inch is to Give Up a Mile'.

Critic reviews

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

A future cult classic

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)

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)

The literary equivalent of guerrilla street art (Marc Bennetts)

Urgent and bold (Anna Aslanyan)

[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)

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

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')

HEARTBROKEN over the performance of this title

I've followed the activism of Pussy Riot since they first made news, going so far as to stand in the rain for an hour and half in Chicago to hear Maria and Nadia speak at a music festival. Was so excited for the release of this book, and thought it would be perfect for my commute. It's horrifying -- performed by a woman imitating a Russian accent in an overdramatic, soap-opera, Boris-and-Natasha way. It's like listening to your eccentric Eastern European aunt tell you salacious stories about her time during the war, rather than listening to a young activist and artist tell a nuanced story about protest and the education it brought. I'll finish listening to it, but I really wish I'd picked up a paper copy instead. This borders on unlistenable.

What's happening on the streets of Moscow

Maria and the others are true, brave heroines. They suffered imprisonment and exile in Siberia for speaking out against the unholy Church-State alliance in Russia. It's similar to what's developing in the US and so drew my interest. The Russian accented narrator adds a realistic touch to the story.