She recently hit the news during the Beslan tragedy when she claimed that she had been poisoned by the FSB secret police (the contemporary version of the KGB). She said they were preventing her contacting the Chechen leaders who were thought to be behind the operation. For years now she has consistently fought to reveal what has been going on in Chechnya, inside the army and elsewhere in the new Russia. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this collection is that it feels like a Soviet-era dissident's book. Her pieces have that slightly desperate pitch of someone who fears no one is listening - that her own people have given up and that the outside world does not want to hear, or worse, does not care.