Never Say War

Superlative … a book of unusual power * The Times *
A daring on-the-ground work of reportage with a distinctly human feel … Written with a reporter’s eye and a novelist’s touch * Financial Times *
The vivid depiction of wartime life in the heart of Russia lingers after reading this fascinating book * Irish Times *
A portrait of the Russia that’s now in the ascendent - a tragic view, leavened by Seierstad’s humane and sharp-eyed prose * Charlotte Hobson, Spectator *
A brave book … Seierstad depicts a nation struggling against the nightmare of authoritarianism * Sunday Independent, Autumn Books to Watch *
A totally unprecedented, behind the scenes portrait of Putin’s Russia at war. Her intrepid travels and interviews lift the curtain on the lives and thoughts of all sorts of Russians. It is astonishing. A major work * Antony Beevor *
I really loved Never Say War. I found it hypnotically good, in fact. She has imparted a sense of the Russians, in this “at war under Putin’s thumb” era in a way I have not experienced before. Once again, Åsne Seierstad has outdone herself with a book that reveals some of the deep and troubling truths about our time. In her telling, Putin’s Russians emerge as a unique people, bighearted, black-humored and self reliant, but nurtured by a tragic sense of their own history. Governed by a ruler without compassion and in the absence if any rule of law, they are condemned to faceless conformity or else, for those heroically doomed exceptions, recklessly romantic lives of sacrifice and oppression * Jon Lee Anderson, author of To Lose a War *
What kind of man enlists to fight in Ukraine? A Russian soldier who runs from Wagner to seek asylum in Norway tells his heart-wrenching story to Åsne Seierstad. Her book takes readers on a journey to St. Petersburg, Moscow and Siberia tracing Russia’s war with Ukraine. A happy read it is not but a necessary one * Jana Bakunina, author of The Good Russian: In Search of a Nation’s Soul *
An exquisite work of on-the-ground reportage conjuring all the violence, injustice and contradiction of wartime Russia. Seierstad’s steadfast empathy and personal warmth give her a direct line to the motivations of everyone from blood-soaked mercenaries to Putin’s most implacable critics. Novelistic-in-scope, insightful and humane * Howard Amos, author of Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruin of Empire *

Asne Seierstad was born in 1970 and studied Russian, Spanish and the History of Philosophy at Oslo University. An internationally bestselling author, she has also received numerous awards for her journalism. She has worked as a correspondent across the world, including in Russia, China, Iraq and Afghanistan.

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