With an apt nod to Vasily Grossman in its subtitle, this offbeat memoir doubles as a treatise on the dangers of totalitarianism. From the annexation of Crimea in 2014, when Alyokhina was released from two years in a penal colony for her part in the Pussy Riot collective, to the war with Ukraine, she tells the story of the contemporary Russian regime as seen from the frontlines of protest. She fled Russia in 2022.