Lea Ypi
Wednesday 9th March 2022
Topping & Company Booksellers of Bath, York Street, Bath, Somerset BA1 1NG
7pm
7.30pm
‘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.’
So far, Free by Lea Ypi has been awarded the Sunday Times’ ‘Memoir of the Year’, and has been chosen as one of the books of the year by the Guardian, Financial Times, TLS, Sunday Times and Daily Mail. It is currently on the shortlist for the Costa Biography Award and the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.
Ypi, who is a professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics, joins us in March 2022 to discuss this tale of family secrets and political awakenings set against a crumbling regime.
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.