A Small Corner of Hell

Chechnya is a territory of about 6,000 square miles in the northern Caucasus, and it has lived under Russian domination for centuries. After it declared independence in 1991, a brutal war followed, then a Russian withdrawal and a period of rule by bandits and warlords. Apartment building attacks in Moscow in 1999, allegedly organised by a rebel faction, restarted the fighting.

Russia has worked hard to keep reporters away from the conflict, so few people outside the region grasp its scale or the atrocities committed there. Eyewitnesses compare those atrocities to what was uncovered in Bosnia.

This is non-fiction reportage by Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent for the liberal Moscow newspaper Novaya gazeta. She was the only journalist with constant access to Chechnya, and her reputation for honesty among Chechens let her keep reporting on the tactics Russia's leaders used against the uprisings.

It is her second book on the war and gathers dispatches, though it works as more than a set of collected articles and columns. The focus is on civilians caught in the crossfire, and the book records what daily life in the war is like.

It also examines the war's effect on Russian society and looks at who profits on both sides, from guards taking bribes from Chechens caught out after curfew to the United Nations. The tone is direct and unsparing, and the subject is harrowing. Politkovskaya was assassinated in Moscow on October 7, 2006.