Free cover art

Free

Coming of Age at the End of History

 Preview

Listen with Audible free trial

Free with 30-day trial
Prime logo New to Audible Prime Member exclusive:
2 credits with free trial
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks
Download titles to your library and listen offline
₹199.00 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Free

Written by: Lea Ypi
Narrated by: Rachel Bavidge, Lea Ypi
Free with 30-day trial

₹199.00 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for ₹650.61

Buy Now for ₹650.61

Brought to you by Penguin.

Shortlisted for the 2021 Baillie Gifford prize and the 2021 Costa Biography Award.

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.

'Funny, moving but also deadly serious, this book will be read for years to come. . . 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' David Runciman

© Lea Ypi 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

 Communism & Socialism Freedom & Security History & Theory Ideologies & Doctrines Political Science Politics & Government Professionals & Academics
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1

Critic Reviews

If you read one memoir this year, let it be this
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 (Alec Russell)
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
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" (Frederick Studemann)
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
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 (Laura Hackett)
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 (Stuart Jeffries)
Five stars. . . deserves to be added to the history curriculum
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 (Nigel Warburton)
Ypi excels at describing the fall and aftermath of Albanian communism from the perspective of her childhood . . . rich and remarkable
All stars
Most relevant
Every generation produces liberals who treat their worldview as the terminus of history, and socialists who never stop cataloguing capitalism's sins. Lea Ypi is the rare writer built to referee both camps, mostly because her own household ran the experiment first: a liberal leaning mother and a father who kept a respectful, non Marxist distance from socialism, raising a daughter who then lived out half her life under socialist rule in Albania and the other half watching capitalism arrive uninvited. That's not a thesis, that's a childhood with a control group.

The book splits cleanly, and the split matters. The first half is the masterpiece: a child's-eye view of a collapsing socialist state, filtered through a family that lies to her constantly and lovingly, to protect her from a truth too dangerous for a kid to carry. It's funny, it's tender, it's genuinely unsettling, and it earns every one of those tones at once, which is a much harder trick than writers usually admit. You will fall for this book in the first half and stay for the second out of loyalty as much as curiosity.

The second half trades chills for something worse: a slow, hopeless descent as capitalism arrives and the promised freedom turns out to have fine print. There's no villain to root against here, just the particular sadness of watching a world end without the decency to also end the disappointment. Call it wine and beer sad: mixed, and you feel it the next day.

The epilogue is where Ypi cashes the whole book in. Socialism, by her own account, dismantled her family, and she still spends her career defending it intellectually. That contradiction isn't a flaw in the argument, it is the argument: free, and still tangled in the system that wasn't free with her.

This isn't a book for partisans hunting ammunition. It's for anyone who actually wants to understand the standoff between East and West instead of just picking a side in it, and more books willing to sit in that discomfort would do the standoff some good. Read at least the first half. Read the whole thing to actually earn the ending.

Rating: couple dismantled family, couple of unrepentant defense, one clean consciences out of five.

Wine & Beer Sad

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.