A Life in Fragments by Marina Litvinenko review – surviving Putin

Twenty years on from her husband’s murder, an extraordinary woman reflects on love and resilience

Among the many images of violence that might be used to define Putin’s chilly reign, one stands out. The photo of the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko – gaze defiant, lying in intensive care – taken in November 2006. Litvinenko had met with visitors from Moscow: they poisoned his tea with radioactive polonium. A public inquiry concluded that Putin had “probably” approved the hit, sending two clownish assassins to carry it out.

The London deathbed picture featured in newspapers across the world. It was a powerful symbol of what post-millennial Russia had become: a cruel and vindictive place, ruled by a paranoid KGB tsar. Litvinenko was its ill-fated prophet.