Riot Days

More about the book

In February 2012, after smuggling an electric guitar into Moscow's iconic central cathedral, Maria Alyokhina and other members of the radical collective Pussy Riot performed a provocative 'Punk Prayer, ' taking on the Orthodox church and its support for Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime. For this, they were charged with 'organized hooliganism' and were tried while confined in a cage and guarded by Rottweilers. That trial and Alyokhina's subsequent imprisonment became an international cause. For Alyokhina, her two-year sentence launched a bitter struggle against the Russian prison system and an iron-willed refusal to be deprived of her humanity