The release date for the English version of 'Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History' by
Lea Ypi is Jan 2022. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
Precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi saw Albania's Soviet-style socialism as a guarantee of stability amid eager allies and a predetermined future. That was, until she discovered herself holding onto a stone statue of Joseph Stalin, who had just been decapitated due to student unrest.
The utopia that was promised by communism had not materialized. One's individual future is severely limited by their "biography," which includes their class standing and other ties from a long time ago. When Lea's parents talked about their relatives "graduating" or attending "university," they were talking about serious matters that Lea found difficult to disclose. And when Albania and other Balkan nations joyfully ushered in the "free market" in the early 1990s, Western notions of liberty instead brought about a dystopia marked by sex trafficking, organized crime, and pyramid scams.
Lea had the most colorful political education, here described with remarkable writing talent, thanks to her radical-chic father, her elegant, intellectual, French-speaking grandmother, and her firmly anti-socialist, Thatcherite mother. As one of the most influential young political thinkers in the world today and a well-known communist voice in the UK, Lea raises important issues regarding the price of freedom and provides a novel and stimulating viewpoint on the relationship between the political and the personal, as well as between principles and identity.