Excerpt from Indignity by Lea Ypi, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Prologue

The Photo

'I'm looking for the secret-service archive,' I say as I approach the first taxi parked on Paris Commune, one of Tirana's bustling streets, connecting the city centre to its outer ring road. I hesitate to call it my street, even though it has been my address in Albania for more than twenty years. Already when we moved to the capital during the 1990s, the question 'You're not from here, right?' came up with nagging regularity every time I struck up one of those casual conversations with strangers that appeared innocuous at first, but soon turned awkward.

Most people returning to Tirana comment on how much it has changed: there are now more high-rise buildings, paved roads, cafés, bars and cycle paths. Yet for me it is a place of grief, guilt and endless what-ifs. I have no happy memories of it – at best dispassionate associations with news items, communist-era films and, more recently, traffic jams. The longest stay I endured in the city was when my grandmother died and I returned from my studies in Italy to organize the funeral. Alone in our kitchen during the obligatory forty days of mourning, I struggled to accept that, after decades of teaching me the importance of following rules, she'd vanished from my life without a word of warning. I had once told her that I would return to care for her, just as she'd cared for me throughout my childhood. It was now too late – I could no longer keep that promise. Tirana became for me the capital of remorse and, perhaps to ease my guilt, I blamed the city. It was afflicted with a curse, a capitalist hex after the communist malediction. She should have never returned to Tirana, fifty years after being exiled to the countryside as an enemy of the communist state …

'I'm looking for the Authority for Information Concerning Documentation of the Former State Security Service,' I say, this time specifying the office in the same formal way it had introduced itself in the email inviting me to an appointment.

The taxi driver seems not to hear me. A grey-haired man in his seventies, his face drawn-looking and hidden behind dark glasses, he wears a short-sleeved checked shirt and a 'Make America Great Again' red cap. Loud music blares from his car radio, tuned to Top Gold – a station that plays old classics. As I stand in front of the yellow Mercedes-Benz waiting for his response, I recognize the sound of 'Only You', struggling to drown out Lady Gaga's 'Just Dance' from the taxi parked behind. He's not listening to the music, which has clearly been chosen to attract a certain kind of customer, but smoking and absorbed in a newspaper that covers the entire steering wheel.

'Sir, I'm looking for the Authority for Information Concerning Documentation of the Former State Security Service,' I repeat.

I must sound worried, or at least agitated, because my tone prompts the driver to finally look up, switch off the radio, toss the unfinished cigarette out of the window, and turn to me with an expression of mild concern.

'Avash avash. Take it easy. Take a seat. Who's that you're looking for?'

'Oh,' I mutter, caught off guard by his failure to recognize my destination. 'I'm looking for the office with all the files. You know, the former Sigurimi archives.'

'You're not from here, right?' he asks, as the car engine roars into life, and we begin making our way through the busy morning traffic.

I smile, trying to hide my irritation. I wish I didn't have to take a taxi. I wish I knew how to cycle to the archive without getting lost in all the small alleyways that run through this city like ever-branching veins. Instead, I'm barely able to navigate even Paris Commune, the neighbourhood that supposedly is my own. Perhaps part of me subconsciously wants to stay lost, to remind myself that I never truly belonged, and it's now too late to remedy.

Excerpted from Indignity by Lea Ypi. Copyright © 2025 by Lea Ypi. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.