Name: Free
ISBN: 9780141995113

Lea Ypi

*LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION* 'A young life unfolding amidst great historical change -- ideology, war, loss, uncertainty. This is history brought memorably and powerfully to life' Tara Westover 'Funny, moving but also deadly serious, this book will be read for years to come' David Runciman 'I never asked myself about the meaning of freedom until the day I hugged Stalin. From close up, he was much taller than I expected.' Lea Ypi grew up in one of the most isolated countries on earth, a place where communist ideals had officially replaced religion. Albania, the last Stalinist outpost in Europe, was almost impossible to visit, almost impossible to leave. It was a place of queuing and scarcity, of political executions and secret police. To Lea, it was home. People were equal, neighbours helped each other, and children were expected to build a better world. There was community and hope. Then, in December 1990, a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, everything changed. The statues of Stalin and Hoxha were toppled. Almost overnight, people could vote freely, wear what they liked and worship as they wished. There was no longer anything to fear from prying ears. But factories shut, jobs disappeared and thousands fled to Italy on crowded ships, only to be sent back. Predatory pyramid schemes eventually bankrupted the country, leading to violent conflict. As one generation's aspirations became another's disillusionment, and as her own family's secrets were revealed, Lea found herself questioning what freedom really meant. Free is an engrossing memoir of coming of age amid political upheaval. With acute insight and wit, Lea Ypi traces the limits of progress and the burden of the past, illuminating the spaces between ideals and reality, and the hopes and fears of people pulled up by the sweep of history.

Coming of Age at the End of History

Free

This book was amazing I think because Lea Ypi shows clearly the danger and violence of social change but she encourages you to dream in spite of the danger. She presents the political world through her family and younger self really skilfully. She trusts the reader in the way she tells her life history too. 

Nina 

Celine Nguyen ✿

One of the most striking memoirs I’ve read. Lea Ypi describes her childhood and teenage years through the final years of Albanian state socialism, the post-1990 shift towards a multi-party system and free-market economy, the disorienting and destabilising turn towards free-market neoliberalism, and the Albanian Civil War. It’s rare, I think, to find stories of USSR/communist states that don’t present a flattened ideological narrative—by pandering to Western liberal exceptionalism or misplaced leftist apologia. Ypi’s book feels quite special in that regard!

I loved the first half, where she wrestles with her family’s political beliefs (both explicit and obscured) under state socialism—and does so from a child’s whimsical perspective:

In my family, everyone had a favourite revolution, just as everyone had a favourite summer fruit. My mother’s favourite fruit was watermelon, and her favourite revolution was the English one. Mine were figs and Russian. My father emphasized that he was sympathetic to all our revolutions but his favourite was the one that had yet to take place. As for his favourite fruit, it was quince – but it could choke you when it wasn’t fully ripe, so he was often reluctant to indulge. Dates were my grandmother’s favourite fruit: they were hard to find, but she had enjoyed them when she was little. Hear favourite revolution was of course the French one, and this annoyed my father no end. ‘The French Revolution has achieved nothing,’ he said now. ‘Some people are still extremely rich and make all the decisions, and others are very poor and can’t change their lives.’ (p. 104)

Ypi’s writing is really incredible—warm, sensitive, well-paced, contemplative, analytical. I do feel that the format of a memoir (with really loving, attentive detail to her family dynamics) is especially effective for telling a political and economic history that feels interesting, subtle, engaging. At the end, Ypi writes:

My family equated socialism with denial: the denial of who they wanted to be, of the right to make mistakes and learn from them, to explore the world on one’s own terms. I equated liberalism with broken promises, the destruction of solidarity, the right to inherit privilege, turning a blind eye to injustice…When you see a system change once, it’s not that difficult to believe that it can change again…My world is as far from freedom as the one my parents tried to escape. Both fall short of that ideal. But their failures took distinctive forms, and without being able to understand them, we will remain for ever divided. I wrote my story to explain, to reconcile, and to continue the struggle. (p. 310)

Free Coming of Age at the End of History

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