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Lea Ypi is a professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics. Her first trade book, Free was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Costa Biography Award and the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize. It is being translated into nineteen languages.
If you read one memoir this year, let it be this
*Sunday Times, Books of the Year*
Lea Ypi's Free is the first book since Elena Ferrante's My
Brilliant Friend that I have pressed on family, friends and
colleagues, insisting they read it. . . a truly riveting memoir and
a profound meditation on what it means to be free
*Spectator, Books of the Year*
A magical, timeless and important account of what life was really
like under communism. Free brims with diamond-studded details, it
lays bare the compromises, fear and betrayals of a secret police
state, but is also an uplifting and humorous reminder of how much
the human spirit can endure
*Financial Times*
A tart and tender childhood memoir. But also a work of social
criticism, and a meditation on how to live with purpose. . . A
quick read, but like Marx's spectre haunting Europe, it stays with
you
*The New Yorker, Best Books of 2021*
Enthralling. . . a classic in the making
*TLS, Books of the Year*
Ypi's deliciously smart memoir of her Albanian girlhood at the end
of the Cold War is a brilliant disquisition on the meanings of
freedom - its lures, false hopes, disappointments and possibilities
- in our time
*New Statesman, Books of the Year*
An absorbing memoir of Ypi's Albanian childhood and its ideological
delusions. The freedom she discovers is far more complex than we
might expect
*TLS, Books of the Year*
A strange world and its legacy is now stunningly brought to life.
Lea Ypi offers a moving and compelling memoir of growing up in
turbulent times, as well as a frank questioning of what it really
means to be "free"
*Financial Times, Books of the Year*
Lea Ypi's Free: Coming of Age at the End of History is a
beautifully written account of life under a crumbling Stalinist
system in Albania and the shock and chaos of what came next. In
telling her story and examining the political systems in which she
was raised, the author and LSE professor asks tough questions about
the nature of freedom
*Guardian, Books of the Year*
An astonishing and deeply resonant memoir about growing up in the
last days of the last Stalinist outpost of the 20th century. . .
What makes it so unforgettable is that we see this world, one about
which we know so little, through the eyes of a child.. . It is more
fundamentally about humanity, and about the confusions and wonders
of childhood. Ypi weaves magic in this book: I was entranced from
beginning to end
*Sunday Times*
Utterly engrossing . . . Ypi's memoir is brilliantly observed,
politically nuanced and - best of all - funny. An essential book,
just as much for Britons as Albanians
*Guardian*
Riveting. . . A wonderfully funny and poignant portrait of a small
nation in a state of collapse. . . gloriously readable. . . One of
the nonfiction titles of the year, it is destined for literary
accolades and popular success
*Observer*
Gripping. A book of political reality as lived from day to day by a
young girl coming of age. It shows what can arrive all too easily
in the void left by a suddenly discarded political system.
Unforgettable
*Daily Mail*
A wonderful memoir. . . a uniquely engaging and illuminating
account of a young life during a period of intense turmoil. So
readable, yet Ypi does not sacrifice profound observations about
politics and culture. Detailing the absurdities of the regime from
a child's perspective, she pulls off the remarkable feat of
emphasizing their cruelty with a light and often humorous touch
*TLS*
Fantastically engaging. . . A breakout book. . . Such an engrossing
story that it is (almost) unsurprising that it is already being
translated into eleven languages. If a film follows, don't be
surprised
*Financial Times*
Five stars. . . deserves to be added to the history curriculum
*Daily Telegraph*
Lea Ypi's experiences inspire a moving and profound reflection on
the nature of freedom that avoids either liberal triumphalism or
Stalinist nostalgia. She is most concerned with the futures that
were lost in between
*The New Statesman*
With its delicious sour-sweet comedy and pages of precise
observation, Free opens a window on to one of the most bleakly
isolationist regimes in human history
*Spectator*
Free is a rare and nuanced glimpse into the history of Albania,
offering the personal perspective of a childhood spent in the
shadow of an oppressive regime, and the long and turbulent
transition that came after
*Geographical, Books of the Year*
A really fascinating and wonderful book, and beautifully written
too. Not many writers could have pulled this off with such grace
and elegance. You won't regret buying this one, for sure
*Five Books, Best Philosophy Books of 2021*
Ypi excels at describing the fall and aftermath of Albanian
communism from the perspective of her childhood . . . rich and
remarkable
*Literary Review*
Essential reading. Lea Ypi's gorgeously written text - part memoir,
part bildungsroman - tells a very personal story of socialism and
postsocialism. Poignant and timely
*Jacobin*
Vital . . . an extraordinary memoir of social upheaval and
historical change in 1990s Albania
*Huck*
A powerful and thought provoking memoir . . . wonderfully human, it
is a story of missed opportunities, disillusionment and hope that
ultimately invites readers to ask themselves what it means to be
free
*History Today*
This vivid rendering of life amid cultural collapse is nothing
short of a masterpiece
*Publishers Weekly*
Remarkable and highly original . . . Both an affecting
coming-of-age story and a first-hand meditation on the politics of
freedom
*Editor’s Choice, Bookseller*
A probing personal history, poignant and moving. A young life
unfolding amidst great historical change - ideology, war, loss,
uncertainty. This is history brought memorably and powerfully to
life
*Tara Westover, author of Educated*
Unique, insightful, and often hilarious. . . Albania on the cusp of
change, chaos and civil war is the setting for the best memoir to
emerge from the Balkans in decades
*Craig Turp-Balazs, Emerging Europe*
A lyrical memoir, of deep and affecting power, of the sweet smell
of humanity mingled with flesh, blood and hope
*Philippe Sands, author of East West Street*
Free is astonishing. Lea Ypi has a natural gift for storytelling.
It brims with life, warmth, and texture, as well as her keen
intelligence. A gripping, often hilarious, poignant,
psychologically acute masterpiece and the best book I've read so
far this year
*Olivia Sudjic, author of Asylum Road*
Lea Ypi's teenage journey through the endtimes of Albanian
communism tells a universal story: ours is an age of collapsed
illusions for many generations. Written by one of Europe's foremost
left-wing thinkers, this is an unmissable book for anyone engaged
in the politics of resistance
*Paul Mason, author of Postcapitalism*
This extraordinary coming-of-age story is like an Albanian Educated
but it is so much more than that. It beautifully brings together
the personal and the political to create an unforgettable account
of oppression, freedom and what it means to acquire knowledge about
the world. Funny, moving but also deadly serious, this book will be
read for years to come
*David Runciman, author of How Democracy Ends*
A new classic that bursts out of the global silence of Albania to
tell us human truths about the politics of the past hundred years.
. . It unfolds with revelation after revelation - both familial and
national - as if written by a master novelist. As if it were, say,
a novella by Tolstoy. That this very serious book is so much fun to
read is a compliment to its graceful, witty, honest writer. A
literary triumph
*Amy Wilentz, author of Farewell, Fred Voodoo*
Illuminating and subversive, Free asks us to consider what happens
to our ideals when they come into contact with imperfect places and
people and what can be salvaged from the wreckage of the past
*Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran*
A young girl grows up in a repressive Communist state, where public
certainties are happily accepted and private truths are hidden; as
that world falls away, she has to make her own sense of life, based
on conflicting advice, fragments of information and, above all, her
own stubborn curiosity. Thought-provoking, deliciously funny,
poignant, sharply observed and beautifully written, this is a
childhood memoir like very few others -- a really marvellous
book
*Noel Malcolm, author of Agents of Empire*
Free is one of those very rare books that shows how history shapes
people's lives and their politics. Lea Ypi is such a brilliant,
powerful writer that her story becomes your story
*Ivan Krastev, author of The Light that Failed*
Lea Ypi is a pathbreaking philosopher who is also becoming one of
the most important public thinkers of our time. Here she draws on
her unique historical experience to shed new light on the questions
of freedom that matter to all of us. This extraordinary book is
both personally moving and politically revolutionary. If we take
its lessons to heart, it can help to set us free
*Martin Hägglund, author of This Life*
I haven't in many years read a memoir from this part of the world
as warmly inviting as this one. Written by an intellectual with
story-telling gifts, Free makes life on the ground in Albania vivid
and immediate
*Vivian Gornick, author of Unfinished Business*
Lea Ypi has a wonderful gift for showing and not telling. In Free
she demonstrates with humour, humanity and a sometimes painful
honesty, how political communities without human rights will always
end in cruelty. True freedom must be from both oppression and
neglect
*Shami Chakrabarti, author of On Liberty*
A funny and fascinating memoir
*White Review, Books of the Year*
A rightly acclaimed account of loss of innocence in Albania from a
master of subtext . . . Precise, acute, often funny and always
accessible
*The Irish Times*
A remarkable story, stunningly told
*The Times*
A vivid portrayal of how it felt to live through the transition
from socialism to capitalism, Ypi's book will interest readers
wishing to learn more about Albania during this tumultuous
historical period, but also anyone interested in questioning the
taken-for-granted ideological assumptions that underpin all
societies and shape quotidian experiences in often imperceptible
ways
*Red Pepper*
A classic, moving coming-of-age story. . . Ypi is a beautiful
writer and a serious political thinker, and in just a couple
hundred readable pages, she takes turns between being bitingly, if
darkly, funny (she skewers Stalinism and the World Bank with equal
deadpan) and truly profound
*New York Times*
Beguiling. . . the most probing memoir yet produced of the
undefined 'transition' period after European communism. More
profoundly a primer on how to live when old verities turn to dust.
Ypi has written a brilliant personal history of disorientation, of
what happens when the guardrails of everyday life suddenly fall
away. . . Reading Free today is not so much a flashback to the Cold
War as a glimpse of every society's possible pathway, a postcard
from the future
*Washington Post*
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