Girl, Taken - A True Story of Abduction, Captivity, and Survival

***Gold Literary Award Winner in the Memoir category at 2019 Global Ebook Awards***

Imagine walking home alone one evening. Suddenly, you are assaulted, drugged and kidnapped. Strange men drive you through the night and keep you prisoner. You don’t know who they are. You don’t know what they want. They speak a language you don’t even understand.

This happened to me.

Just three weeks after my 21st birthday, on the evening of October 4th, 1994, I was abducted from the streets of my hometown in southern Russia while on my way home. They drugged me and drove to another country, where they held me captive in a tiny room at first, and then under a house in a pit.

I didn’t have a toothbrush, comb, no other clothing, or even spare underwear. I was utterly alone – no friends, no family, nothing… Every day, I had to knock on the door to my room, so that a blank-eyed gunman with an AK-47 would let me out and walk me to the bathroom under his supervision.

A few weeks after my kidnapping, a brutal civil war broke out. The country plunged into darkness. There was no electricity and no telephone service. All contacts were cut off. There could be no negotiations for my release. I was one lost soul, powerless, and at the mercy of hardened killers in a land where innocent people were dying every day.

Events went from bad to worse. Life became very cheap, very quickly, and the country became an apocalyptic killing zone. I was always in darkness, always under threat. The captors threatened to cut me into pieces and shoot me. I witnessed the horror of war. I saw things I cannot allow myself to think about.

Through eight horrifying months of captivity, witnessing atrocities, surviving bombings and sexual violence, I fought desperately to stay alive, stay sane, and not to lose the one thing that kept me going: my hope.