Patriot, Alexei Navalny's posthumously released autobiography, on display at a bookstore in London in October 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE / Tolga Akmen
Alexei Navalny’s posthumous autobiography, Patriot, has been named Book of the Year at the 35th British Book Awards, also winning in the Non-Fiction: Narrative Book of the Year category, beating out works by former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, American actress Gillian Anderson and six-time Olympic cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy.
His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, noted that Patriot had previously received major international recognition, including the National Book Critics Circle Award in March and the Westminster Book Award in February.
Accepting the award in her husband’s honour, Navalnya was quoted by the London Standard as saying:
“This book was never meant to be published after Alexei’s death, Alexei wrote it with all the strength, wit and honesty that defined him.
He wrote in secret from a prison cell under the most brutal conditions with no access to books, to the internet, to anything but his own memory and will. And yet he created a manuscript that speaks with clarity and conviction not only about Russia, but about freedom, justice and what it means to remain human. After he was killed, publishing this book became more than a responsibility – it became a mission. I worked closely with his editors and friends to preserve every word, every sentence, just as he intended.”
“I wish more than anything that Alexei could have accepted these awards in person,” she wrote on Telegram. “For a million obvious reasons — but also one more: I know how happy he would’ve been. How proud. For him, these awards weren’t just a symbolic gesture, but true recognition.”
Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s most prominent political opponent, died last year in an Arctic penal colony while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he — and nearly every neutral international body that commented on the matter — denounced as being politically motivated.
Before being arrested in January 2021, Navalny exposed official corruption and led major anti-Kremlin protests across Russia. In August 2020, he was poisoned by an FSB assassination squad that broke into his hotel room and smeared the weapons-grade chemical nerve agent Novichok on the inseam of his underwear. After recovering in Germany, Navalny returned to Moscow, where he was promptly taken into custody by police officers at passport control at Sheremetyevo Airport.
A joint investigation by Bellingcat, The Insider and CNN, with contributions from Der Spiegel, published in December 2020, revealed the names and ranks of the FSB officers responsible for poisoning Navalny. Nevertheless, Navalny was handed multiple lengthy prison sentences.
The Russian Federal Penitentiary Service in the northern Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug reported Navalny’s death on February 16, 2024, claiming he fell ill after a walk. The politician's family and associates are certain that he was murdered. The Russian authorities, however, have refused to investigate Navalny’s death, claiming that he died as a result of “arrhythmia” — an irregular heartbeat.
In late September 2024, The Insider released an investigation based on hundreds of official documents related to Navalny’s death. These indicated that the politician was poisoned while in prison. The documents showed that the Russian authorities consistently removed references to symptoms Navalny was noted by prison doctors to have been suffering — symptoms that did not fit with the Russian state’s official cause of death. As medical experts managed to confirm, these symptoms clearly indicate that Navalny was poisoned.
Many of Navalny’s supporters and associates — along with journalists who reported from his trials, doctors who called for an inquiry into his death, and even members of his legal team — have been persecuted and thrown in prison on charges of extremism. The legal basis for these prosecutions stems from a 2021 ruling by a Russian court that designated Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) and its regional offices as “extremist organizations.”
The designation effectively criminalized any affiliation with the movement and allowed Russian authorities to prosecute critics under the country’s expansive anti-extremism laws — tools widely criticized by international human rights groups as instruments of political repression. Russia’s Ministry of Justice has also refused to remove Navalny from its list of “terrorists and extremists” — even after his death.
The day after Navalny's murder, Yulia Navalnaya released an address in which she vowed to continue her husband's work. Over 400 people were detained in dozens of cities across Russia at events in Navalny’s memory, and hundreds risked arrest to lay flowers and pay their respects at his funeral in Moscow on Mar. 1, 2024.
Since Navalny’s death, makeshift memorials dedicated to the politician have appeared all across the globe, maintained by communities of exiled activists.
Patriot, Alexei Navalny’s posthumous memoir, was released in multiple languages in mid-October last year.