Anne Nivat

Anne Nivat (born June 18, 1969 in Poisy) is a French journalist and war correspondent who has covered conflicts in Chechnya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. She is known for interviews and character portraits in print of civilians, especially women, and their experiences of war.

Early life

Anne Nivat is a French citizen who grew up in Haute-Savoie near the Swiss border and Geneva. Her father is Georges Nivat, who is a historian of Russia and translator of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Nivat's mother taught her Russian. She is a resident of Paris and has also lived in Moscow.

Education

Nivat completed her doctorate in political science after education at Paris Institute of Political Studies, or Sciences Po, in Paris.

Nivat became an expert on politics in Russia. Her first book was about Russian media during the period of glasnost in the former Soviet Union, the dissolution of the country, and its aftermath until 1995 (Anne Nivat, Quand les médias russes ont pris la parole : de la glasnost à la liberté d'expression: 1985-1995, published in 1997). After a stay at Harvard University with the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies (1997-1998), she went to Russia and reported from Chechnya in 1999.

She said she was influenced by Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński, whom she later met before his death, and the well-known Italian journalist Curzio Malaparte, who covered the Eastern front during World War II and wrote his accounts in the books Kaputt (1944) and The Skin (1949).

She speaks several languages besides her native French, including Russian, English, and a working knowledge of Arabic.