Vale Anna Politkovskaya

When she was a guest at this year's Sydney Writer's Festival, Russian journalist and author Anna Politkovskaya enthralled everyone with her fierce intellect and astonishing courage. A strong critic of Vladimir Putin through her reportage for the independent paper Novaya Gazeta, she was the one journalist the Chechan rebels trusted to report on the Moscow theatre siege in 2002. In Sydney, she spoke about her role as liaison between the Russian government and the rebels - a task that was thrust upon her and one she undertook with great apprehension. She claimed she was poisoned on the plane on her way to cover the Beslan school siege in Chechnya in 2004. There was a strong sense of weary fatalism as she spoke, as if she knew the Russian secret police would get her one day, one way or the other. And now someone has. This morning it is reported that she was found murdered in her Moscow apartment building. The news is appalling but Politskovskaya's voice can't be killed off as easily as her body - she is the author of several books on modern Russia, including the recent Putin's Russia and A Dirty War: A Russian reporter in Chechnya. Register your protest by going to Amazon UK and reading the work of this exceptional woman.