Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s memoir will be published posthumously this fall, his widow revealed Thursday.
The book, titled “Patriot,” will be released on October 22 in multiple languages, including Russian, Yulia Navalnaya said in a post on social platform X.
According to Navalnaya, her husband started writing his autobiography in 2020, shortly after he was poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok.
Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson, described working on the book in a Telegram post on Thursday, writing that the Russian opposition leader had invited her to Germany, where he was undergoing medical treatment after the poisoning, to assist in the project.
Navalny dictated parts of the book to Yarmysh at the time, but finished it while in prison after returning to Russia in 2021.
Penguin Random House, which will publish the memoir in the United Kingdom, has called the book “a rousing call to continue the work for which Navalny sacrificed his life.”
In the United States, the memoir will be published by Alfred A Knopf, which described the book as “the full story” of Navalny’s life that follows “his youth, his call to activism, his marriage and family, and his commitment to the cause of Russian democracy and freedom in the face of a world super-power determined to silence him.”
Navalny, who began his career as a lawyer, went on to become an anti-corruption campaigner, Russia’s most famous opposition figure and President Vladimir Putin’s most high-profile critic.
He died on February 16 at age 47 in a Siberian prison north of the Arctic Circle, according to the Russian prison service.
Navalnaya, his widow, has accused Putin of responsibility for her husband’s death and indicated that she will pick up her husband’s mantle, for a “happy, beautiful Russia.”
The Kremlin has denied any role in Navalny’s death.