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A Child and a Country at the End of History
by Lea Ypi
Book Reviewed by:A reflection on "freedom" in a dramatic, beautifully written memoir of the end of Communism in the Balkans. Longlisted for the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.
Lea Ypi grew up in the last Stalinist country in Europe: Albania, a place of queuing and scarcity, of political executions and secret police. While family members disappeared to what she was told were "universities" from which few "graduated," she swore loyalty to the Party. In her eyes, people were equal, neighbors helped each other, and children were expected to build a better world.
Then the statues of Stalin and Hoxha were toppled. Almost overnight, people could vote and worship freely, and invest in hopes of striking it rich. But factories shut, jobs disappeared, and thousands fled to Italy, only to be sent back. Pyramid schemes bankrupted the country, leading to violence. One generation's dreams became another's disillusionment. As her own family's secrets were revealed, Ypi found herself questioning what "freedom" really means. With acute insight and wit, Ypi traces the perils of ideology, and what people need to flourish.
THEY SMELL OF SUN CREAM
I still associate all our efforts to learn from the outside world with Dajti, the name of the isolated mountain range that surrounded our capital and dominated its landscape as if it had captured it and was holding it hostage. Dajti was physically remote but always with us. I never visited it. I still don't know what "receiving from Dajti" meant—who received what, from whom, or how. I suspect there was a satellite or TV receiver up there. Dajti was in every house, in every conversation, in everyone's thoughts. "I saw it last night through Dajti" meant: "I was alive" or "I broke a law" or "I was thinking." For five minutes. For an hour. For a whole day. For however long Dajti would be there.
When my father became frustrated with the programmes on Albanian television he would declare, "I am going to see if we can get Dajti." He would then climb up onto the roof, twist our antenna this way and that, and shout through the window, "How is it now, is it better?" ...
I highly recommend this book. Lea Ypi's personal story of coming of age illuminated the history, politics and culture of Albania. I learned something on every page (Lucy S). I think this would be an excellent choice for a book group, allowing discussions about how the adults in her life protected her by not telling her the truth about the system under which they lived, but also exploring the ways in which political philosophies are distorted by those who claim to be creating a society based on them (Rosemary C)..continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse First Impression Reviewers).
Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran
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. David Runciman, author of How Democracy Ends
This extraordinary coming-of-age story is like an Albanian Educated, but it is so much more than that. Ivan Krastev, author of The Light that Failed
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. Vivian Gornick, author of The Odd Woman and the City
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 modern day Albania vivid and immediate: no mean accomplishment.
Lea Ypi's memoir Free charts the author's coming of age in a family of dissidents in Albania in the 1980s and '90s, before and after the fall of communism. Albania is located in southern Europe in the Balkan Peninsula, with the Adriatic Sea on its western border and Greece, North Macedonia and Kosovo to the east. The earliest recorded inhabitants of the area were known as the Illyrians, one of three core population groups in the region, the others being the Thracians and Greeks. Along with the rest of the Balkans, the area that is now Albania was conquered by the Romans in the 3rd century BCE, and over the following 2,200 or so years, it saw multiple empires come and go, including the Ottoman Empire which controlled the region from the 15th...
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