Enfin libre: Grandir quand tout s'écroule

by Lea Ypi

Lea Ypi est née en Albanie, le plus fermé et le plus stalinien des États satellites de l’Union soviétique en Europe. Ses parents, assoiffés de liberté, ont épousé la cause de la démocratisation dès la chute du régime honni. Aujourd’hui, Lea Ypi enseigne le marxisme dans une prestigieuse faculté de Londres.
Les jalons de ce parcours inattendu sont posés dès l’enfance. Dans une passionnante autobiographie politique, écrite à hauteur d’enfant, l’autrice décrit son amour des pionniers et du leader Enver Hoxha, sa fascination pour les réclames sur la télé italienne captée clandestinement, les files d’attente devant les magasins, les premières cannettes de Coca et la relation pleine de complicité avec sa grand-mère, fille de pacha de Thessalonique qui lui enseigne le français. En 1990, tout bascule. Ses parents, délivrés de leurs « origines bourgeoises », s’engagent en politique. Mais très vite, c’est l’ébranlement de tout un pays sous le choc néo-libéral. Rien n’est plus comme avant. Les usines ferment, tous cherchent à rejoindre l’Italie, les fusils font la loi. La jeune fille est prise dans un tourbillon politique qui est aussi un vacillement intime : qu’est-ce qu’être libre ?

Un magnifique récit aussi poignant que cocasse.

Lea Ypi est professeur de théorie politique à la London School of Economics. Enfin libre est son premier livre.

Traduit de l'anglais par Emmanuelle et Philippe Aronson.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, History, Biography, Politics, Biography Memoir, Audiobook

336 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 2021

About the author

Lea Ypi is professor of political theory at London School of Economics, and adjunct associate professor of philosophy at the Australian National University, with expertise in Marxism and critical theory. A native of Albania, she has degrees in philosophy and in literature from the University of Rome La Sapienza, a Ph.D. from the European University Institute and was a post-doctoral prize research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University. Her latest book, a philosophical memoir entitled “Free: Coming of Age at the End of History,” published by Penguin Press in the UK and W. W. Norton & Company in North America, won the 2022 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Slightly Foxed First Biography Prize. She lives and works in London.

Reviews

[B. H.]

Over the years, I have grown wary of the literature (both fiction and non-fiction) produced around Albanian communism and its immediate aftermath. If not going the route of sterile allegories, those who write about Albania's past tend to portray life under Communism in a way that flattens all complexities for the sake of condensing as much pain on the page as possible. And there are several reasons for that, chief being a belief in the power of narrative to bring about justice. But more often than not these stories are published because they respond to the Western market's demand for such narratives, often to justify the need for the neoliberal reforms pushed by the EU and the NGO industrial complex.

Free does not fall into any of these traps. It is nuanced, oftentimes hilarious, a masterful blend of the personal and political, and above all original in its confrontation with Communism and Albania's long transition into a liberal and "democratic" country.

From this side of history (and especially to Western readers), there are many aspects to life under Communism that may seem absurd, or improbable. And in reading about those experiences, there can be a tendency to exoticize them, or to feel pity, both on the part of the reader and the writer. It ends up feeling too expository or not genuine. But Ypi manages to sidestep this minefield by inhabiting and writing from the position of the child she used to be, a charming kid who took everything at face value. In doing so, the complex mechanisms of Communism are always present, but rarely interrogated, which allows us to live as little Lea lived: loving xhaxhi Enver and believing in Stalin, yes, but also exchanging gum wrappers for a chance at a sniff, and feeling genuine happiness at having an empty can of Coke to display on top of the TV.

This first section had me in stitches. It felt so real, including the tendency to remember communism through the lens of humor. There is this frank quality to Ypi's writing that manages to capture the atmosphere of Albania in those years. I can't quite explain it, unless you've experienced it yourself. It's all in the details really, the brands, the shops, the classes, the vocabulary that managed to survive the end of Communism through the decades.

But if the first part of Ypi's book is brilliant in its narrative, the second portion - focusing on Albania in the early 90s - is an absolute tour de force. It is harrowing, poignant, and a masterful analysis of the policies that led to the 1997 civil war; it is also a brilliant takedown of the groups and ideas that were meant to make of Albania a "western" democracy, with a "market economy" and the human costs of these "structural reforms."

It is astounding to read how the vocabulary of neoliberalism swiftly replaced a socialist vocabulary; and what's even more astounding is to realize that it's been 30 years, and we are still stuck in the same carousel. It's the same organizations and structures making the same promises and demands; the same dreams of achieving European standards, of being told to fight for freedom, and rule of law -- all while institutions like the World Bank recommend that our government lower its minimum wage requirements to attract more investments. At a time when, the minimum wage requirement is not enough to survive on. And as people leave en masse, Western-sponsored media publish articles where they speak of lazy Albanian workers who are no longer willing to work for scraps, thus "requiring" companies to hire foreign workers. Meanwhile, Albania's putative socialist Prime Minister jokes that foreign workers are better for business because they don't speak Albanian and thus can't unionize.

This is a thought-provoking book that I'm going to return to over and over. I did have some minor qualms. As an Albanian reader, I found some of the exposition a bit jarring, and I could always feel the Albanian vocabulary underneath the English, which made it a clunky reading experience at times. The discussion about freedom felt forced in, especially toward the beginning. But still, a wonderful read that doesn't fall into the trap of forgetting that life under a so-called authoritarian regime can be just as uneventful and routine as life anywhere else. Sometimes it's just life.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.5 stars *

It’s always fascinating to read of other cultures, and Lea Ypi’s memoir of growing up in Albania is no exception. Albania was the last Stalinist state in Europe, and as such, very little was known about it. That all changed with the creation of independent political parties, bringing about the fall of communism, just a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
If some Albanians thought they were already free, they were about to discover what real freedom meant. It would be a time of many firsts, as the Ypi family traveled to Greece, the birthplace of Lea’s grandmother, and a time when Lea’s parents finally dared to admit that their country had been an open-air prison for almost half a century. They wouldn’t have dared express such an opinion previously!

Sometimes sad, sometimes amusing, Lea Ypi’s memoir brings both communist and post communist Albania vividly to life. It’s a country I knew very little about, so it was both interesting and informative, and although I thought it was a little rushed at times, it was still well worth the read.

*Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Press UK for an ARC in exchange for an honest unbiased review*

[Nika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who would have thought that a book about a society in transition, the last years of communism, and the hopes and disillusionment after the fall of the socialist regime in Albania would be so fascinating? This memoir was a page-turner for me.

The author tells us about her childhood and teenage years in Albania in a friendly and honest manner. At times, it was like talking to a friend whose complex and often conflicting feelings you could easily understand. The author's voice felt authentic. Lea Ypi talks about traumatic experiences with a certain irony and sarcasm.

"But if there was one lesson to take away from the history of my family, and of my country, it was that people never make history under circumstances they choose."

We follow Lea, who lives in socialist Albania with her parents, grandmother, and younger brother.
She goes to school, where she is taught how privileged she is to be born in this country.
Lea has to be grateful to the Party leadership for living a peaceful and free life with so many opportunities open to her.
"The Party was above us, but it was also deep inside. Everyone, everything, came from it."
Unfortunately, millions of people around the world are oppressed and marginalized. Their country has many powerful detractors, including the US, the USSR, and Yugoslavia. However, even they will eventually see the benefits of the socio-economic model and way of life in Albania under socialism. All these preachings make a strong impression on the girl who has been in this system since her birth.
Lea's parents have always tried to protect her by not casting doubt on her belief in the official propaganda tropes.
I cannot help but think that this easily understandable desire to shield your child under an authoritarian regime can produce a generation of people, many of whom grow up to be true believers. They have not been exposed to alternative viewpoints, not only at school but also at home.
Lea is precocious, impressionable, and curious about the present moment and her family history. The story of her parents and grandparents intrigues her. She cannot figure out why her grandfather had to leave his family to study at the university for many years. Why are her parents not fascinated by Enver Hoxha*? Why are they reluctant to have his photo in their living room?

She has yet to learn that the right answers require the right questions. If Lea asked the right question, she would find out that her grandfather had been in jail for many years. The state viewed him as a dangerous and obnoxious element.

Lea witnesses the beginning of what looks like a new era when you do not have to toe the line anymore. Instead, you learn about civil society, tax declarations, corruption, and pyramid schemes.
The collapse of the socialist regime and the new freedoms brought great hope to many people in Albania. For many, however, those big expectations were to be replaced by frustration brought on by increasing financial difficulties, the threat of civil war, and a palpable sense of hypocrisy surrounding them.
"The West had spent decades criticizing the East for its closed borders, funding campaigns to demand freedom of movement, condemning the immorality of states committed to restricting the right to exit. Our exiles used to be received as heroes. Now they were treated like criminals."

The author skillfully blends her personal story with that of her homeland and with commentary on political and economic issues. She reflects on socialism vs. capitalism. How do the liberal and socialist traditions interpret the ideas of freedom and human dignity? Can the concept of socialism be divorced from the experience of many Eastern European countries? Is it possible to separate a set of ideals from practice?
"Everything that went wrong on my side of the world could be explained by the cruelty of our leaders or the uniquely backward nature of our institutions. They [Lea's foreign friends] believed there was little for them to learn. There was no risk of repeating the same mistakes, no reason to ponder what had been achieved, and why it had been destroyed. Their socialism was characterized by the triumph of freedom and justice; mine by the failure of these ideas to be realized. Their socialism would be brought about by the right people, with the right motives, under the right circumstances, with the right combination of theory and practice."

This book is a delicate reflection on memory, history, and identity, how we treat them, or perhaps how they treat us. Should we remember the past with all its follies? Or would it be better to let it go? Can memories of past tragedies and traumas prevent us from committing new mistakes and injustices? Is remembering always more healing than oblivion? Can we choose what to remember and what to forget?
This memoir also makes you think about the meaning of freedom, the connection between freedom and responsibility, between freedom and the recognition of moral duty.

Lea's mother believed in the survival of the fittest and that people were naturally inclined to be aggressive.
Lea's father, on the other hand, believed in human kindness and "a kernel of goodness in everyone. He blamed dysfunctional societies for the prevalence of a dark side of human nature and always tried to help those in need. If someone is considered weak and outcast by society, in most cases it is not their fault. They deserve compassion, not contempt.
The author's grandmother knew how to face the blows of fate and remain resilient, witty, and empathetic. Despite the many difficulties of the present, she was not nostalgic for her past and the privilege into which she had been born and raised.
"She had never ceased to be responsible. Freedom, she said, is being conscious of necessity."


*Enver Hoxha ruled the country until he died in 1985.

[Henk · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book against simplification and generalisation and against thinking of perpetrators and victims. A thoughtful book on regime change and what events in the newspapers, in far away small countries mean for people of flesh and blood
He knew everything had a price but was unwilling to accept that price

A thoughtful book on a country I knew next to nothing about. Sometimes I was a bit confused where in time I was and what the author was working towards, but a thought provoking book on societal systems, change, and the role of the individual in all this, and history in general. Both communism (Albanian style, which was particularly isolated) and crash capitalism after the fall of the regime of Enver Hoxha are critiqued in a show, don't tell manner, from the perspective of the author growing up. The oblique talk on people graduating from universities, an adult cover-up of the camps and prisons of the regime, is chilling. The shift in perception from especially Italy, who first welcomes refugees and when they come in the 10.000's per boat puts them in camps and extradites them, is very familiar, if not any less cynical than what we see in the current day refugee crises.

The transformation of Lea Ypi from a model communist girl to a London School of Economics professor focussed on the meaning of freedom is very impressive and subtly captured in the book. Also the reflection on the nature of both her mother and father, who need to find a way, after being prosecuted by the regime, to fit into a rapidly changing post-communist state, whose people collectively try to find it's footing is thoughtfully narrated in Free: Coming of Age at the End of History.

Especially the author's mother is rendered in a complex manner, from one of the prosecuted, to a free market liberalist and a politician, who still needs to rely on the rather inert father of the family to really make it in Albanian civil society. The 1997 civil war, again an event I remember next too nothing about, triggered in part by a Ponzi scheme of shadow banks falling apart due to over exaggerated expectations of the boons of capitalism and liberalisation, is chillingly described near the end of the book.

A book that really makes one think and brings a hardly talked about nation to the spotlight.

Dutch quotes:
Je kan beter een ontevreden mens te zijn dan een tevreden varken

Hij wist waar hij tegen was maar vond het moeilijk om te verdedigen waar hij voor stond

Ik had geen ingang tot de juiste antwoorden omdat ik niet wist hoe ik de juiste vragen moest stellen

Ik leerde de waarheid kennen toen hij niet meer gevaarlijk was

Ze was nooit niet verantwoordelijk geweest

Falen was de kust waarvan we ons losmaakten het kon niet de haven zijn waaraan we aanmeerden

Zonder daders bleven er alleen ideeën over om de schuld te geven

Iedereen wilde weg

Als je geld hebt zijn wegen natuurlijk wel open

Hij wist dat alles een prijs had, maar hij was niet bereid die prijs te accepteren

Mijn vader bewonderde politici enkel na hun dood

[Fionnuala]

This unusual memoir is Lea Ypi's account of, first, her innocent childhood under socialist rule in Albania in the 1980s (she was born in 1979), and then the shock of finding out in 1990 after the regime fell that the 'freedom' she'd been taught at school to value so much wasn't freedom as the rest of the world understood it at all.

Plus there was the further shock of discovering that her family had completely different opinions about freedom from the ones she'd learned at school—and her mother's perspective was different again from her father's—but had felt obliged to hide their real thoughts for fear of being denounced. The result was that her parents communicated in front of Lea all through her childhood in a kind of coded language that only made the intelligent child question everything all the more although her grandmother's wise words often smoothed over the cracks in communication.

That may all sound very serious but Lea Ypi tells her story from the point of view of her eleven-year old self, a child with the ability to describe the dilemmas of her family's everyday life in a light-hearted and comical way. If you want to know what it was like to live in Albania, a place that was neither East nor West, neither truly communist nor the kind of independent socialist state that Tito ruled over in neighboring Yugoslavia, then this memoir of growing up in a family that didn't know if it was East or West either, is not to be missed.

For me, the key point that emerged from this memoir shocked me out of my own certainties: the coded conversations in Lea's home contrasted so greatly with the unambiguous instruction about socialism given by her primary-school teacher Nora, that Nora, rather than her parents, became her model when it came to understanding the world. The several disastrous 'liberal' governments that replaced the Albanian socialist party between 1990 and 1996—when Lea left Albania to study at an Italian university—only reinforced the lessons of her favorite teacher about the value of socialism:

"My family equated socialism with denial: the denial of who they wanted to be, of the right to make mistakes and learn from them, to explore the world on one’s own terms. I equated liberalism with broken promises, the destruction of solidarity, the right to inherit privilege, turning a blind eye to injustice."

That realisation, plus the wise words of her grandmother, "When it’s difficult to see clearly into the future, you have to think about what you can learn from the past", seems to have dictated the seventeen-year old Lea's decision on what to study at university: much to her parents' dismay she chose to study philosophy which to them meant coming in contact with Marx and his philosophy of socialism.
……………………………………………………
The reader is aware that under socialist rule, Lea couldn't have left the country to study elsewhere. She might argue that for most Albanians, the freedom to leave the country has meant a more difficult struggle for a livelihood than the one they had known under socialist rule. For her, capitalist countries don't provide access for most emigrants to the lifestyles the capitalist economy seduces them with. She's not wrong—though second generation emigrants might argue the case.

[Dem · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insightful and highly original memoir. A moving and witty story about growing up in Albania in the final days of the last Stalinist outpost of the 20th century.

Lea Ypi grew up in one of the most isolated countries in Southern Europe. 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.

It’s a fascinating read, funny, tragic and insightful. I really enjoyed the glimpse into life in Albania and the fall of communism through the eyes of Lea. What moved me was the huge adjustment from one way of life to another and how people coped and changed their views on religion and politics. It’s not a heavy memoir and yet I leaned so much and enjoyed everything about the book. I knew nothing about Albania so delighted when a fellow goodreads reviewer recommended this one.

I listened to Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History on audible and while the narrator was good I am really sorry I didn’t purchase a hard copy of this one as I have a feeling there were photographs and maps that I may have missed out on.

[Mark Porton · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you decide to read a memoir this year, just one, it needs to be Free by Lea Ypi.

This is a coming-of-age memoir, seen through the eyes of young Lea Ypi during the fall of communism in 1990s Albania. We get a glimpse of Lea’s family life prior to the fall of the authoritarian regime of Enver Hoxha/Ramiz Alia (1946 – 1991), and the consequent civil unrest.

There’s humour here and of course, there is ample serious subject matter too. I found Lea's Mother and Father the most interesting and funny. We see the family arguments, the hard life living in a communist state, school life, the sad history of dispossession of property and assets, the ubiquitous eyes of the Sigurimi (Secret Service). There’s also the absurd, bureaucracy of an autocratic society on display here – the queuing up for milk and bread for hours for example, a way of life.

As the title suggests a central theme in this memoir is freedom. If you think about it, this is a complex notion. What does it mean? Are we referring to internal freedom? For example, the freedom to do the right thing, or external freedom – the freedom to say what we like? To do what we like? Of course – none of us have total freedom. But this memoir had me thinking about this complex concept. The more I think about capitalism and liberalism, the more I believe we aren’t free at all. Perhaps those who possess little or no money, freedom is a total stranger.

The fall of communism was a momentous occasion of course. However, as we know from what happened in countries we may be more familiar with, it was no bed of roses. The highly structured, controlled, state, provided a certainty that was not guaranteed in a more liberal society. The new, uncertain world can appear (and really be) worse than what came before it. We see all of this here. Ypi provides an inside look of what it was like.

A taste of the beautiful humour expressed by the author:

On those occasions, my cousins and I would swim near the tourist beach and sing in English (baa baa black sheep) – “Ban ban blackship, eni eni you.” They would stare back with a look between confused and frightened



A wonderful picture of Lea at the beach in 1986

Imagine the confusion children like Lea experienced when, for all their life, they heard nothing but praise from their family and friends about the state, only to see and hear the same people march and protest its downfall. Everything you thought you knew was turned on its head. Wow.

Then to compound the aggravation – Albania experienced a civil war from January to August in 1997. Again, we see this through the eyes of a young girl, trying to study for her final year of high school (with power cuts, school closures, Kalashnikovs firing at all times of the day), the terror and uncertainty – the poor lass lost her ability to speak at one stage. It is heartbreaking.

Did this new Albania offer a more free or safer society than under Hoxha? The Adriatic seabed would home thousands of dead Albanians as they fled on boats to the luxury of refugee camps in Italy.

The ending was sad and profound.

5 Stars

An interesting short video about this book, including an appearance by young Lea Ypi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI3lf...

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

My knowledge of Albania was, until reading this, almost non existent. This historical memoir begins when Lea is a child, totally convinced that her country under communism was free. She was taught in school to revere Enver Hosta and couldn't understand why her family, unlike other famous, didn't have a framed picture of him. She couldn't understand why her biography, actually status, wasn't as promise nent as her classmates. She wouldn't find out the answer to her questions until the death of their leader, and the protests for true freedom that followed.

An interesting book that shows a country fighting for democracy, the challenges faced and how things changed, for not only her family, but for the country as a whole. She finds out the many secrets her family kept, and that their political views had been different from those they were forced to expouse.
I loved how this started when she was young because one can chart her personal and political evolution. As her country changed so did she.

[Jan-Maat]

In my opinion this book is gold. I enjoyed it so much that I read it twice, first unofficially by which I mean not registering it on Goodreads rather than reading it in a bookshop while trying to avoid eye contact with the staff for a while sitting in a park on one of those Spring days when it is warm enough to sit outside so long as you are in the sunlight, laughing away to myself, then a second time officially on Goodreads posting updates of parts I thought amusing and short enough.

Perhaps you have seen the episode of the Simpsons cartoon called the Crepes of Wrath which features an Albanian? In it we are told that Albania's primary export is furious political debate, this might be the book that undermines that joke.

While reading I heard of a study done on the grandchildren of people who had been killed or sent to live in the countryside during the Chinese Cultural revolution, they found that generally they were at the same or higher socio-economic level of privilege as their grandparents. I fear that is a bit of a spoiler for this book, sorry about that.

To say that I love Voltaire's Candide would be too strong, but I do think it is an amusing and clever book, but this is better in my opinion. It is a philosophical memoir written by Ypi to explain her personal Marxism to her mother despite her early childhood in the last years of Albania's peculiar because over time it isolated itself from all the other Communist states on account of their backsliding Communist regime.

I doubt that this is a strictly accurate or literal account - apart from criticism about factual accuracy it strikes me that the three significant adults in her life: paternal grandmother, father, and mother are a bit too Goldilocks to be true, for example when seeing a legless beggar, her father turns out his pockets to give the man all the money he has, while her mother would not give the man a penny and would explain that his poverty was is own fault, the grandmother however would give him some money but would be sure to keep enough to buy the young Ypi an ice cream - which is an important consideration to a child. The mother comes across as Margaret Thatcher's twin sister - mysteriously born years later than her twin in Communist Albania. She is too busy being fierce to listen to other people's opinions, she knows that she is correct, her favourite revolution was the English one it's never clear if she is thinking of the one in which the king was separated from his head or the later one in which the King was replaced by his son-in-law, but it doesn't really matter - establishing property rights and then sitting back to let the market take care of everything is her ideal, and she never bothers to look in a mirror to brush her hair. Ypi's father idolises dead revolutionaries, his favourite revolution is yet to come, actual revolutions so far have only been a disappointment, through an odd series of events in ends up in Parliament as Albania descends into civil war. The Grandmother insists on speaking French to Ypi which Lea learnt to speak before she learnt Albanian, her favourite revolution was the French revolution. Young Ypi preferred the Russian revolution her ears are open to words of her elementary school teacher; Nora. Nora's criticisms of Capitalist societies are reasonable enough, but the reader can quickly see that what she says about Albanian society is misleading. If in Albania the state supports and allows people to develop their own talents freely then how come is Ypi's mother a Maths teacher when she hates Maths while her father was forbidden to study Science and is working in Forestry? The answers lie in their mysterious biographies.

Throughout the book Ypi shows us different ideas of freedom which we can weigh up and compare as we go. As a child she has absolute freedom to decide whether to go left or right when she comes out of school, as either way will get her home. As a teenager the freedom of others to loot Government arsenals means it is not safe to leave the house for fear of gunfire. For years Albanians were not free to leave their country, but when Communism ends can they afford to travel abroad and if they can other countries have effectively closed their borders to them by imposing visa regimes.

She shows us a naive matter of factness that dominated the years around the end of communism how smuggling (drugs, women men's freedom bought at the expense of women's unfreedom, guns) is perceived simply as legitimate free market activity, the country goes crazy for pyramid investment schemes - when these collapse disappointed investors seize weapons as mentioned above and take to the streets. Young Ypi has an interesting double consciousness at the time she accepts the message she hears in foreign media that the fighting is due to ethnic differences within the country even though she knows that her parents are from the two different groups and she herself doesn't know to which she might belong.

Just as if things are not going badly enough, international development agencies arrive to begin to push neo-liberal policies on to the Government.

Any way lots of things happen. And Ypi's narration is often very funny, but occasionally poignant, and perhaps overall the story is a tragedy, and if you read this book, which has been translated into a fistful of languages (many of which she speaks herself her German at least with a curious Italian inflexion), you will see why yes moves philosophically to Marxism and insists on taking the experience of Communist societies seriously to understand how a society can provide its members freedom.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

My family equated socialism with denial: the denial of who they wanted to be, of the right to make mistakes and learn from them, to explore the world on one's own terms. I equated liberalism with broken promises, the destruction of solidarity, the right to inherit privilege, selfish enrichment, cultivating illusions while turning a blind eye to injustice.

I think what made me love this book so much is Ypi's marvelous evocation of the Lea she was from early childhood till the age of 18 when she leaves Albania for university in Italy, combined with her present intelligent and thoughtful stance as a professor of Political Theory at the LSE. The combination gave me exactly the nuanced and, above all, personal memoir that I wanted to read: of someone who grew up not questioning socialism under 'Uncle Enver' Hoxha's authoritarian dictatorship, but who found the 'freedom' of neoliberalism no panacea either.

Ypi is a natural storyteller. Her voice, her wit and humour, her ability to nail a character and select an anecdote are marvellous. This reminded me of Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon and Veronica Raimo's Lost on Me (the latter without the party political overlay). I shared her childhood amidst her slightly eccentric family - and was as shocked as she was when she realised how the family code had hidden a history of repression, incarceration and brutality: relations who 'were studying at university' had been sent to prison; those who had 'finished university' had served their sentence and been released.

And then the socialist regime collapses in 1990 and Albania is opened up to 'freedom' - a concept confusing to young Ypi because when had she not been free, she thought? What makes this memoir unusual is that this is not the end of the story: the advent of democracy and elections also brings with it a whole host of bankers, consultants, advisers with their own 'rules' overseen by the World Bank - and who are not, of course, giving their 'advice' gratis. Suddenly the concept of 'debt' which had never existed is a condition under which everyone lives; institutions are shut down and there is mass unemployment. There's a particularly moving scene where Ypi's father is besieged in his home by a host of Roma workers from the local port who are all supposed to lose their jobs in the interests of profitability, which would leave families and a disabled man destitute - Ypi's father disobeys the banks in this case, but is deeply affected by what his country has become.

To pile on disasters, pyramid schemes suddenly come into being and a country unused to the profit motive learns they can invest and double their savings. People sell their homes, pile all their money into these scheme - which, inevitably, implode so that life-time savings are wiped out. At which point, the country descends into civil war...

To be clear, Ypi is not defending dictatorship, authoritarianism, or a repressive totalitarian state. But she does refuse to be starry-eyed over an imposed capitalist system that discounts people as mere assets to be counted and moved around like counters. She questions (as she does in her academic work) a regime of borders and asks how the walls which keep Albanian emigrants out of western democracies differ from those of Hoxha which kept them in Albania. There are also horrific stories of ships of emigrants trying to leave the country being intercepted, capsized and passengers drowning, as well as of Albanian women being trafficked and working as prostitutes in Italy and Greece.

The book ends with eighteen year old Lea leaving Albania for Italy where she will get her first degree. I would dearly like to know what happened next.

[Fátima Linhares · Rating 4 out of 5]

O que eu sabia da Albânia antes de ler este livro:
- que a capital é Tirana (um nome bem cool);
- que é a terra natal da Madre Teresa de Calcutá e da família da Dua Lipa (talvez a minha cantora favorita);
- que tem muitos cães abandonados e está a ser descoberta pelos turistas, pois é bonita e barata.

Depois de ler este livro, pouco mais fiquei a saber, até porque isto é um livro de memórias de uma miúda que teve o seu coming of age durante o período em que a Albânia se tornou um país livre do socialismo soviético. Não é um livro de História, é um livro que, através dos olhos da autora, nos vai contando um pouco do desenvolvimento deste país com três milhões de habitantes.

Quando a pequena Lea Ypi crescia, instigada pela professora Nora, acreditava no socialismo soviético e na bondade dos políticos do país, apesar de viverem de senhas de racionamento e nem sempre conseguirem trocá-las por alimentos. Ter uma lata de coca-cola vazia era um motivo de orgulho, até era colocada como bibelot na sala. Admirava Enver Hoxha, de quem todos os albaneses tinham um retrato em casa, exceto a sua família, coisa que a pequena Ypi não compreendia, até que...

O meu país foi declarado oficialmente um Estado multipartidário a 12 de dezembro de 1990, passando a ser um dos que teriam eleições livres.

Viveram-se tempos tempestuosos, em que todos os Albaneses que conseguiram fugiram para Itália. Muitos vinham recambiados. O pai de Lea conseguiu um trabalho melhor do que o anterior arranjado pelo Partido, e até chegou a deputado, ainda que por apenas seis meses. A situação financeira da família melhorou até perderem as economias num esquema em pirâmide. A mãe também se envolveu na política, mas depois fugiu com o irmão mais novo de Lea para Itália. O Banco Mundial interveio, houve despedimentos, houve protestos estudantis, iniciados no sul, em Vlora, e o país quase chegou a uma guerra civil.

Era como se tivéssemos regressado a 1990. Havia o mesmo caos, a mesma sensação de incerteza, o mesmo colapso do Estado, o mesmo desastre económico. Mas com uma diferença. Em 1990, estávamos cheios de esperança. Em 1997, já a havíamos perdido. O futuro parecia sombrio.

Foi uma boa leitura, não no início, em que me senti tão perdida como a pequena Lea na década de 1980. Depois, comecei a perceber e foi muito bom acompanhar esta família de resistentes. Apesar de terem passado dificuldades, como os restantes albaneses, a forma como Ypi faz o relato daqueles tempos conturbados e de como afetaram a sua família é ligeira e até com uns laivos de humor.

Deixei a Albânia e atravessei o Adriático. Acenei para o meu pai e para a avó, que ficaram no cais, e viajei para Itália, num barco que navegou por cima de milhares de corpos de afogados, corpos que foram ocupados por almas mais esperançosas do que a minha, mas que tiveram destinos menos afortunados. Nunca mais regressei.

[Bianca · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an extraordinary memoir this was - beautifully written and immensely clever.

The cherry on this exquisite cake was the many uncanny similarities in our experiences, although we grew up in different countries, albeit with similar regimes, Ypi is Albanian, I'm Romanian, and she's a few years younger than me.

Growing up, Albania was never much on my radar - I knew they were a communist country (NB: Ypi refers to all as socialism, I always think of it as communism, regardless, it was pretty much the same - obviously, they played by the same book). Growing up in a closed border country very few goods were making their way in, most of them were from other communist countries. Some of my favourite treats to eat when growing up were a whole date jam and some sesame bars, both imported from Albania. Even for those goodies you had to have contacts to purchase them. I was privileged in that way.:-) Like in Albania, we had to queue up for basic necessities, there were rations etc. This might explain my phobia when it comes to queuing.

This memoir is mostly told from the perspective of a child, who absorbs the school's propaganda and her parents' and grandmother's views and opinions - which I thought was a clever way to go about telling a story that is complex and layered. Given her family's diverse biography, this provides the readers with a full-bodied, personal history that overlaps with a revolution, and a civil war, after all, when big historical events take place, people still live their small lives, sometimes, without realising they're living through important historical moments.

Ypi is a professor of political theory. The author's afterword is a must-read/listen as well.

I'm so glad I took the time to listen to this and I'm grateful to the public library system for making this audiobook available for free.

Highly recommended

NB: While I don't mind this cover, I absolutely love the alternative covers with the Coca-Cola can, if you read this book, you'll realise its relevance.

[Argos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sovyetler Birliği dağıldıktan sonra sosyalizmin çöktüğü son Avrupa ülkesi olan Arnavutluk’ta, bu tarihi değişimin öncesini ve sonrasını birinci ağızdan, yazarın ağzından, yaşadıklarını, hatırladıklarını, duyduklarını kronolojik sıra ile anlattığı anılarıyla okuyoruz. Basit ve sade anlatımlı dili ile okuru yormadan adeta hem dünyada hem de ülkesinde bir dönemin panoramasını roman olarak aktarıyor yazar. Siyasi ve felsefi sorgulamalarla çocukluğuna denk gelen sosyalizmi ve gençliğinde yaşadığı liberalizm yıllarını tarafsız ve biraz da duygusal bir dille anlatıyor Lea Ypi.

Kaderin cilvesi değil, kendi seçimi ile İngilterede London School of Economics’te siyaset teorisi dersinde öğrencilerine Marksizm’i anlatan yazar, kitabın sonundaki “sondeyiş” bölümünde bu seçiminin nedenini anlatıyor, “özgür” ve “özgürlük” kavramlarını farklı bir açıdan okumak güzel oldu.

Anne ve baba üzerinden rejim değerlendirmesi kitaba akademik hava da veriyor. Babaanne Nini şahane bir karakter. Ailesinin çektiği sıkıntıları abartıya kaçmadan anlatması kıuguyu gerçekçi kılmada önemli bir rol oynuyor. Kitabı çok beğendim, kesinlikle okunacaklar listesine alınmalı.

[merixien · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5/Bir süredir kitap okuma ve odaklanma konusunda zorlanıyordum. Bu kitap bana o motivasyonu tekrar kazandırdı. Bu yıl okuduklarım arasında beni en çok etkileyen üç kitaptan birisi.

En başından şunu belirteyim eğer ihtiyacınız olan şey bir hikayenin sizi alıp götürmesi ve soluksuz okutmasıysa bu kitabı çok sevmeyebilirsiniz. Çünkü kitap yazarın 1989 ile iç savaşın başladığı 1997 yılları arasında Arnavutluk’ta geçen çocukluk- gençlik anıların kronolojik ilerleyişi üzerinden ülkenin tarihini aktarıyor. Fakat bu tarihi Enver Hoca rejimine maruz kalan bir çocuğun gözünden izlemeniz kitabın en vurucu yanlarından biri. Tıpkı Magda Szabo’nun kitaplarında -özellikle de İza’nın Şarkısı’nda- görülen çocukların beyinlerinin okulda yıkanması ve eğer rejime uygun bir ailenin içinde değilse o aileden uzaklaştırılması, Szabo’nun tabiriyle “küçük askerlere” dönüştürülmesi adım adım görülüyor burada da. İlkokul çağındaki çocukların siyasetle ilişkileri, aileleri üzerindeki denetleyici yaklaşımları, okulda, bir topluluğun arasındayken öğrendikleri şeylerin aile ortamında öğrendiklerinden daha doğru görülmesi ve bu masum itaatın devlet eliyle nasıl parti çıkarları için kullanıldığını okumak, hikayenin gerçekliği yanı başınızda dururken çok daha rahatsız edici hale geliyor. Tabii kitap kişisel anılarla devam etse de bir yandan da Arnavutluk’un İkinci Dünya Savaşı öncesi ile iş savaş süreci arasında geçişlerle ülkenin siyasi ve toplumsal yapısına ve bu yapılardaki değişimlere dair çok fazla bilgiye de sahip oluyorsunuz. Çünkü Lea Ypi’nin ailesi siyasal açıdan hem geçmişle hem de sonrasıyla ilgili çokça farklı bağlara sahip.

Kitap bir bütün olarak çok iyi olsa da son bölümü; ülkesi bir iç savaşa sürüklenmişken ailesinin her bir üyesi için ayrı ayrı endişelenmek zorunda kalan ve bir yandan da geleceğini belirlemeye çalışan bir genç kızın günlüğünden okumak çok zorlayıcıydı. 240 sayfalık bir kitap okumama rağmen sanki 500-600 sayfa okumuş gibi hissediyorum. Bunu kötü anlamda söylemiyorum asla.Kitapta anlatılan şeyler o kadar yoğun ve dolu ki siz okudukça genişliyor adeta. Kitap bittiğinde yazarın günümüzde düşüncelerini ifade ettiği “Sondeyiş” kısmı ise ayrıca kıymetli. Kitap boyunca size düşündürdüğü “özgürlük” kavramına dair bir yeni kol daha ekliyor. Benim gibi, 97 yılında Arnavutluk’ta olanları televizyondan ve gazetelerden görmüş takip etmiş yaşlarda olanlar içinse; çocuk zihniyle uzaktan gördüğü ve anlam vermeye çalıştığı olaylar silsilesine biraz daha içeriden bakmak açısından ayrı bir yere sahip olacaktır. Ben çok sevdim, herkese tavsiye ederim.

[Rob M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an intensely moving book of political philosophy, which happens to take the form of a personal memoir. 'Free' recounts the author's childhood experience of late-communism, transition, liberalism, civil war, and state failure.

Author Lea Ypi presents us with two broad conceptions of freedom, mapping loosely onto what Isaiah Berlin referred to as 'positive' and 'negative' liberty. She describes an idyllic childhood under latter-day Albanian Stalinism - a poor and frustrated society, but one with little destitution and a strong sense of collective solidarity and security. She then describes her traumatic teenage years under the transition to capitalism, a society where hope and endless possibility gave way to new and unforeseen forms of injustice and brutality.

We find ourselves bearing witness to the fate of Ypi's parents, and the contrast with her own fate. Her parents were doomed to a meagre, stifling existence under socialism because they were the children of high ranking fascists. Ypi herself, a model young pioneer of communism, was subsequently betrayed by the violence of the 'free' liberal society her own parents personally ushered into being.

Ypi also describes the never-to-be society that lives in the hearts of dreamers. The society wished for by liberals like Ypi's father - who watched in horror as Albania was burned to the ground in the name of post-socialist 'structural adjustment' - and by the Western leftists she later befriended, who refused to recognise any socialism other than in the effigies of revolutionaries who were lucky enough to be killed before they became killers.

Although the text is not prescriptive - it is a work of philosophy, not a manifesto - it is hard not feel that Ypi's ultimate sympathies lie with Stalinists of her childhood rather than the neoliberals of her adolescence. In some ways, the torturers of Albania's prison camps are painted in more sympathetic colours than her own mother. The character of Ypi's mother emerges as an Ayn Rand-esque libertarian who, after brief moments of triumph during the fall of communism, ends her days cleaning the homes of strangers as a refugee from the Hobbesian nightmare she did her utmost to set in motion. Further, Ypi's gentle denouncement of luvvie dreamers leads me to feel that she has - in some Faustian sense - reconciled herself with really-existing old Uncle Enver.

However, in a text as rich and complex as Free, it's easy to speculate about the author's motives. It's also easy to project your own convictions and preconceptions onto the text, and perhaps that's what I've done above. This is one reason the book is such a delight to read. Heart breaking though it is, 'Free' has the enjoyment value of a good novel, while challenging the reader as thoroughly as any theoretical tract.

I would place Lea Ypi into the school of 'revisionist' scholars who have, in recent years, been weighing in the balance both the failures and the achievements of post-war European socialism. An analysis that has only recently become possible now that the totalising atmosphere of liberal triumph has begun to exhaust itself. I would read her alongside authors like Kristen R. Ghodsee and Gal Kirn, and no doubt many contemporary socialists will do likewise. Free, however, seems to have achieved wild success well beyond a left wing audience and has been lauded by the liberal mainstream. I wonder to what extent that mainstream will take its insights to heart.

[Georgiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5 ✨ Educația e singura modalitate pentru a face lumină în mijlocul întunericului. Ea a fost mereu un colac de salvare, doar cu ajutorul sau poți cunoaște libertatea, și așa va rămâne, deși în zilele noastre alte valori sunt promovate.
Istoria, etapele și efectele unor regimuri politice aflate la putere, se repetă indiferent de poziționarea pe glob.
Roman politic despre viața unei familii de intelectuali, trăită pe tărâmuri albaneze, de-a lungul ultimului secol; acțiune care ar fi putut fi plasată la fel de bine în oricare alta dintre țările fostului bloc comunist.
Mi-a plăcut mult, nu știam mare lucru despre Albania, am învățat multe lucruri citind acest roman ficțional cu tentă auto-biografică, pe care îl recomand cu căldură.
Lea e concisă, circumspectă și extrem de complexă în gândire. Foarte bună scrierea sa, fără a fi lipsită de profunzime sau căldură.

Multe citate/ idei mi-au bucurat sufletul, las mai jos câteva pentru a putea reveni la ele:
“Să fii liber, a zis, înseamnă să fii conștient de propriile nevoi.”

“Libertatea nu e sacrificată doar când alții ne dictează ce să zicem, unde să mergem, cum să ne comportăm. O societate care pretinde că le dă oamenilor posibilitatea să-și înțeleagă potențialul, dar nu reușește să schimbe structurile care îi împiedică pe toți să prospere este tot una opresivă. Și totuși, în ciuda tuturor constrângerilor, nu ne pierdem niciodată libertatea interioară: libertatea de a face ce este corect.”

“Doar adevărul este liber și doar atunci libertatea devine reală.”

“În orice caz, a adăugat luându-și o mină serioasă, concentrarea pe aparențe, mai degrabă decât pe ceea ce contează cu adevărat, era o greșeală imperialistă tipică. Stalin era un gigant, iar faptele lui erau de departe mult mai relevante decât fizicul său.”

“Nu mă gândisem prea mult la libertate. Nici nu era nevoie. Aveam libertate din plin. Eram atât de liberă, încât adesea resimțeam libertatea ca pe o povară și, uneori, cum se întâmpla în ziua aceea, ca pe o amenințare.”

“Pe la sfârșitul anilor ’40, când 16 Iugoslavia s-a dezis de Stalin, noi am ales să ne separăm de ea. În anii ’60, când Hrușciov a făcut de rușine moștenirea lui Stalin și ne-a acuzat de „deviaționism naționalist de stânga“, am rupt legăturile diplomatice cu Uniunea Sovietică. La sfârșitul anilor ’70, am renunțat la alianța cu China atunci când aceasta a decis să se îmbogățească și să trădeze Revoluția Culturală. Nu conta. Eram înconjurați de dușmani puternici, dar știam că noi suntem de partea bună a istoriei.”

“Vorbeau adesea despre revoluția nicaraguană și despre Războiul din Insulele Falkland; se entuziasmau de începutul negocierilor pentru a pune capăt apartheidului din Africa de Sud.”

“Povestea vieții mele nu era povestea evenimentelor care se întâmplaseră într-o anumită perioadă de timp, ci povestea căutării întrebărilor potrivite, întrebări pe care nu mă gândisem să le pun.”

“Nu aveam acces la răspunsurile corecte pentru că nu știam să pun întrebările corecte. Dar cum ar fi putut fi altfel? Îmi iubeam familia. Aveam încredere în ei. Acceptam tot ce îmi serveau ca să-mi satisfac curiozitatea. În căutarea unor certitudini, mă bazam pe ei să mă ajute să mă prind cum merg lucrurile în lume. Nu mi-a trecut niciodată prin minte, înainte de acea zi din decembrie
1990, după întâlnirea cu Stalin în ploaie, că familia mea era sursa nu doar a tuturor certitudinilor, dar și a tuturor îndoielilor.”

“Credea că nu ne moștenim opiniile politice, ci suntem liberi să le alegem și că le alegem pe cele care ni se par corecte, nu pe cele mai convenabile sau care ne servesc cel mai bine interesele.”

“Când libertatea a venit în cele din urmă, a fost ca un preparat servit congelat încă. Am mestecat un
pic, am înghițit rapid și am rămas nemâncați. Unii se întrebau dacă nu cumva ni se dăduseră doar resturile. Alții atrăgeau atenția că sunt doar aperitivele reci.”

“Timp de jumătate de secol, toți am împărtășit aceeași structură a cooperării și opresiunii, îndeplinind roluri sociale care aveau acum să fie cu totul diferite, chiar dacă bărbații și femeile care le jucau rămâneau aceiași. Rude, vecini, colegi au luptat unul împotriva altuia și s-au susținut unii pe alții, au bănuit și au fost bănuiți în chip metodic în timp ce construiau legături pe care te puteai baza. Aceiași oameni care se spionaseră reciproc oferiseră și o ascunzătoare protectoare. Gardienii de închisoare fuseseră deținuți, victimele fuseseră făptași. Nu voi ști niciodată dacă clasele muncitorești care au defilat de 1 mai erau aceleași care au protestat la începutul lui decembrie. Nu o să știu niciodată cine aș fi fost dacă aș fi pus alte întrebări sau dacă întrebările mele ar fi primit alte răspunsuri sau nu ar fi primit niciun răspuns. Lucrurile au stat într-un fel și apoi au stat altfel. Fusesem cineva și apoi am devenit altcineva.”

“Vestul petrecuse decenii criticând Estul pentru granițele sale închise, finanțând campanii care militau pentru libertatea de mișcare, condamnând imoralitatea statelor care își făcuseră o misiune din restricționarea dreptului de a ieși. Exilații noștri erau priviți ca niște eroi. Acum erau tratați ca niște infractori. Poate că libertatea de mișcare nu contase niciodată cu adevărat. Era ușor să militezi pentru ea când altcineva făcea treaba murdară de întemnițare. Dar ce valoare avea dreptul de a ieși atunci când nu exista niciun drept de a intra?”

“Mama nu s-a luptat și nu și-a învins fricile. Ea nu a știut de la bun început ce e frica.”

“Bunica ne învățase pe toți să dăm tot ce putem chiar și atunci când avem lucruri mărunte de făcut, să încercăm mereu să ne asumăm consecințele, chiar dacă nu ne putem asuma cauzele. Nu putea să admită că nu reușește să-și îndeplinească rolul.”

“Dacă le uit numele, o să le uit și viețile (…) Nu vor mai fi oameni, vor deveni cifre. Aspirațiile, temerile lor nu vor mai conta. Ne vom aminti doar regulile, nu și pe cei cărora li se aplică. Ne vom gândi doar la ordine, nu și la scopul pe care îl servesc.”

“Într-o fostă țară comunistă, zicea ea, nu există stânga sau dreapta, doar 'nostalgici comuniști' și „liberali care nutresc speranțe“.”

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

An interesting memoir, one I didn’t entirely connect with but still found to be a worthwhile read. Lea Ypi grew up in Albania, which until she was 11 was an isolated nation under one-party Stalinist rule. Not knowing anything else, she was a happily indoctrinated kid, and in for a shock when the regime fell and she learned about her family’s secrets and her country’s dark side. The memoir is about her childhood and teenage years, and largely told from a child’s perspective, which allows the reader to enter into her worldview and make discoveries alongside her (I admit, I hadn’t figured out her family’s code either before she explained it). And it is well-written and insightful about the key people in her life, namely her mother, father and grandmother. The author relates many episodes from her life quite vividly, and I learned a fair bit about Albania both during and after one-party rule.

That said, the author is now a philosophy professor and it shows, as she spends a lot of time analyzing the worldviews of her adult relatives, while increasingly coming across as a passive observer in her own memoir. I was startled at the end to discover that this book began as a project to explain to her politically conservative mother how she became a professor of Marxist theory after all the family had been through. Hopefully her mother now gets it, but I’m afraid I didn’t quite follow: her childhood indoctrination and disillusionment is there, and we see some insightful critiques of western society’s inequalities and hypocrisies from the Albanians, as well as the very mixed blessing of “freedom.” (After the end of Stalinist rule, Albanians can freely leave the country—only to promptly be refused entry by everyone else as unwanted migrants, unless they happen to be rich. They can vote, but many lose their jobs, lose their savings to pyramid schemes, and see neighborhood solidarity and mutual assistance break down as violence and trafficking flourish.) In the epilogue, Ypi goes to college in Italy and is unsettled to see classmates romanticizing socialism without taking into account the experiences of countries like Albania. Then the book ends, without ever showing how she came back around to Marxism—we can make some educated guesses based on her prior observations, but no more than that.

So as a tale of a woman’s intellectual journey, this book feels rather incomplete. But as a collection of stories illuminating a childhood in a country most people know little about, I found it engaging, thoughtful and well-written, a window onto a world with which I was not familiar. Certainly worth a read for the interested.

[Eylül Görmüş · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bayıldım bu kitaba. 1979'da, komünist Arnavutluk'ta doğan ve çocukluğunu komünist bir devlette geçiren, ardından ilk gençlik döneminde rejim değişikliğine ve liberal ekonomiye geçişi deneyimleyen ve bildiği dünyanın tamamen tepetaklak olmasına, sosyalist olduğunu düşündüğü anne-babasının bile aslında hayatta kalmak için kendilerini gizleyen muhalifler olduğuna tanık olan bir kadın Lea Ypi. Kitabın alt başlığındaki gibi "her şey parçalanırken büyüme"yi öyle güzel anlatıyor ki, hayranlıkla okudum. Kendisi siyaset bilimi alanında çalışan bir akademisyen olduğu için hem bu büyük toplumsal konuyu mükemmelen çerçeveliyor, hem de özellikle çocukluğunu anlattığı dönemleri yazarken büyük bir maharetle geri dönüp bir çocuğun anlamlandırma ihtiyacını, dünyanın belirsizliğini ve tanımsızlığını mükemmelen hissettirerek yazıyor. Dolayısıyla hem çok akışkan, hem çok derinlikli bir metin çıkıyor ortaya.

Aslında sosyalizme dair bir inceleme yazmak niyetiyle başlamış Ypi bu kitaba ancak bunu salt teorik bir çerçeveden, kendi tanıklığını katmadan yazamayacağını anlamış ve kitap bir anı kitabına dönüşmüş, iyi ki de öyle olmuş çünkü bence tanıklığı müthiş kıymetli. Kitabın adına dair bir not: her iki sistemin farklı biçimlerde tanımladığı özgürlük kavramına ve aslında her ikisinin de insanlara sunduğu şeyin özgürlük olmayışına dair çok derinlikli bir sorgulamaya da girişiyor Ypi. "Avrupa'nın kıyısında olma" hâli açısından Arnavutluk'un deneyiminin bizim ülkemizinkiyle de pek çok açıdan benzerlik gösterdiğini düşündüğüm için okumanızı çok arzu ederim. Bonus: izleyenler, Annie Ernaux'nun oğluyla yaptığı "Süper 8 Yılları" belgeselindeki Arnavutluk seyahatini de hatırlasınlar okurken.

Şu alıntıyla bitireyim: "Benim ailem sosyalizmi sınırlanmayla eşit sayıyordu: kim olmak istediklerinin, hata yapma ve bu hatalardan öğrenme haklarının, dünyayı kendi koşullarıyla keşfetmelerinin sınırlanmasıyla. Ben liberalizmi tutulmamış vaatlerle, dayanışmanın yok edilişiyle, ayrıcalıklara sahip olma hakkıyla, adaletsizliği görmezden gelmekle bir tutuyordum. (...) Benim dünyam da, annemle babamın kaçmaya çalıştıkları dünya kadar uzak özgürlükten. İki dünya da o idealden uzak."

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.75) I knew next to nothing about Communist Albania (apart from what showed up in the novel Brass) before picking this up on account of its shortlisting for the Costa Award. It’s pretty astonishing that there was a country still in this condition in the 1970s-80s: Ypi writes, “When I was born, the chances of survival were put at thirty per cent. My parents dared not give me a name but celebrated the hospital number I was assigned: 471.” Days-long queues for food and kerosene were common. The cover tells a humorous yet troubling story: an empty Coke can, displayed as a decoration, was a status symbol fought over by her family and their neighbours. People were desperate to get out of the country.

There came a turning point in December 1990, when the first free election in decades was held, but civil war was still on the way in 1997, a time Ypi records through her diary entries from the time. I enjoyed the recreation of her childhood perspective, though I might have liked at least a short retrospective section from adulthood. The book is quite funny despite the often sobering realities of life as she recounts her parents’ shifting fortunes and the fates of friends and classmates. I was surprised to learn that the family was Muslim, and that the author’s first language was French thanks to her grandmother; Albania is a real mix of cultures (I had to look on a map: it’s above Greece and just across a short stretch of water from Italy).

In an epilogue, Ypi writes that this book was initially going to be more of a political and philosophical study “about the overlapping ideas of freedom in the liberal and socialist traditions”; I’m glad we got this instead, as there were already two general nonfiction studies of freedom published in 2021, by Olivia Laing and Maggie Nelson, and a third would have felt like overkill plus would have lacked the charm of a memoir of childhood. “This book was written mostly from a cupboard in Berlin during the Covid-19 pandemic,” she says. In her grandmother’s words, “When it’s difficult to see clearly into the future, you have to think about what you can learn from the past.”

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lea Ypi has written a classic, a compulsive and highly recommended read. ‘Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History’ (2022) is a memoir written in a coming-of-age structure that takes us from her childhood to her teenage years, as she tells us about life in Albania in the 1980-90s, between the last years of communism and the first years of liberalism. In the first part, Ypi returns to her childhood, revealing how the world of ideals was created and maintained around her by her school teacher and the half-truths of her parents and grandparents. When the dictatorship falls in 1990, her world is transformed overnight, with her parents revealing to her that they had never supported the party, nor Enver Hoxha or Stalin. Ypi discovers overnight that all her references had been built on a lie...

Texto complete em português, com excertos e vídeo, no Narrativa X: https://narrativax.blogspot.com/2024/...

[emre · Rating 5 out of 5]

arnavutluk bence dünyanın en garip ülkelerinden biri. bu garip, kelimenin türkçede kullandığımız iki anlamını da içeriyor. tarihinde olup bitenler ilk etapta tipik bir güneydoğu avrupa ülkesi gibi duyulsa da aslında yaşadığı tüm süreçleri tam bir yalnızlık, bağlantısızlık içinde geçiriyor. öyle ki tarihinin bir kısmında dışa neredeyse tamamen kapalı, tek müttefiki (o bile şaibeli) dünyanın öbür ucundaki çin. ve resmi olarak dünyadaki ilk ateist ülke. balkanlarda hiçbir dille köken bağı olmayan arnavutça da bu yalnızlığı bir nebze besliyor denebilir bence. tüm yapayalnızlar gibi özgürlük ve biçarelik arasındaki geçişken durumu sıkça deneyimliyor arnavutluk da. ypi'nin kitaba bu ismi vermesi çok anlaşılır geldi bana bu yüzden; hayatı da bu kavram etrafında aktığı için bu tercih metni daha çekici kılıyor. kişisel anlatıların ve tür olarak anının sihri burada bence, tarih "devlet büyükleri"ne ait biyografiler ya da akademik metinler üzerinden belki çok yavan biçimde okunabilecekken hatıralar, duygular ve günlükler işin içine girince keyifli, anlaşılır ve insancıl hâle geliyor. çünkü kavramsal olarak öğrendiğimiz bir şeyin aslında ne olduğunu ancak yaşadığımız bir şeyle birleşince anlayabiliyoruz gibi geliyor bana. bu açıdan uzun zamandır beri bir çeşit nerdü olduğum arnavutluk'a (öyle ki lisede dönemin virali arnavut şevket videosunun da katkısıyla adım arnavut emre'ye çıkmıştı) dair bazı terimleri, pratikleri bu kitap sayesinde yeni idrak ettim.

balkanlar ve ortadoğu'nun bir diğer "garip" ülkesi olan türkiye hakkında da daha çok memoir okusak keşke diyerek bitiriyorum.

[Geevee · Rating 3 out of 5]

A readable and overall pleasing memoir written by Lea Ypi about [parts of] her childhood in Albania.

The Albania of the late 1980s and into the early 1990s was a one-party communist redoubt against capitalism, liberalism and in essence anything Western, but also a country that had broken links with the Soviet Union. This outwards isolation saw the Albanian state maintain a grip and narrative over its people that was akin to that of 1950-60s Russia, with echoes of the modern-day North Korea, and all that those two states created to maintain order, respect [for one's leader and party], and the necessary education and work plus access [or not] to technology, news, literature, and art etc., for the good and benefit of the people and the all powerful State.

Ypi's book is both enjoyable and useful in how we see the above aspects played out in respect of her life as a child and how her family live, love and importantly talk during this period. This latter is especially important as the reader sees when Ypi writes of her family's "biography" and how each individual has a biography and how that shapes their life in terms of education, occupation, residential location and accommodation type and more.

The book is split into tw0-parts: the first in the few years (late 1980s-1990) leading up to the fall of the Communist regime and the move to a post-communist nation learning to become a "free" nation; the second is a few years later (1996-98) as the corruption exacerbated by the collapse of a number of large pyramid schemes saw a rebellion/civil war break out.

As the book progress we learn much about those family members and indeed friends and others who come into contact with the Ypis. There are some secrets or aspects that are not discussed but are alluded to that a young Lea finds confusing or unclear; she asks questions but answers are not necessarily straightforward or forthcoming. There are other interesting parts such as friends, schooling, Uncle Enver (Hoxer, the all supreme Albanian leader), and indeed coke cans.

The second part of the book deals with the fall of the state owing to corruption and fall of the pyramid schemes, which does not leave the Ypi's untouched. This second part of the book starts well, but one feels slightly short-changed here. The author to this point has been detailed and allows the reader to immerse themselves in the YPI family life, but this second period is a lessser section as the overarching narrative soon gives way to the rebellion/civil war covered by a few pages of contemporary diary entries. Ypi waves this away as "how does one write about civil war?". Yet, this book is called "Free", and the civil war and its outcomes completes the projection that propels Ypi, and her family members, to new lives (some by choice; other not). This then sees the book fade towards the end when a stronger editor would have demanded better content and detail.

Overall, this was a enjoyable and worthwhile read. I did have some questions though, such as, for example: where did the French visitors to the Ypi family house go? one minute they were there and the centre of the narrative, the next poof gone and never mentioned again. The final couple of pages provide some detail on Ypi's choice of career with Philosophy and notably that she lectures on Marx/Marxism.

Also, and finally, I groaned when I bought the book as there were six pages - not including the back cover - of fawning quotes espousing the brilliance, greatness, wonder, etc. of this amazing and classic memoir. It was good but Penguin, please give the blurb a rest and save a few trees by printing far fewer hyperbolic statements.

My copy was a Penguin paperback published in 2022. It had sixteen B&W and colour prints.

[Karenina (Nina Ruthström) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lea Ypi född 1979 växer upp i proletariatets diktatur i Albanien. 1985 dör statschefen ”farbror Enver” och 1990 faller regimen. I Fri berättar hon om sin uppväxt, först i ett helt isolerat land där straffet för olovlig utresa är dödsstraff, sen i ett så kallat ”fritt” land med marknadsekonomi och inbördeskrig (pyramidkrisen). Hon är i skrivande stund professor i politisk teori och problematiserar också frihetsbegreppet. Kort sagt: Fri är en fantastisk läsupplevelse och jag instämmer i hyllningskören.

Det mest slående med den här berörande och varma autofiktiva uppväxtromanen som förstås tilltalar den som intresserar sig för sydeuropeisk historia, mänsklig existens, frihet och politik är författarens perfekta humor.

Som barn är Lea väldigt nöjd med sitt land och sin tillvaro. Alla har samma saker, ingen är utan och alla är fria på riktigt. Hon tycker synd om fattiga som lever i ”väst” för i kapitalistiska länder är ju bara de rika fria. Information om levernet präglat av liberalism får hon via turister (som luktar märkligt – solkräm, förstår hon senare) och svårinställda tv-kanaler. Omslagets röda burk – en eftertraktad inredningsdetalj som ju verkligen inte alla hade – är en slående metafor för den här tiden då få visste hur Coca cola smakade och semestrarna finansierades av partiet.

”Vår lärare Nora hade förklarat att utanför Albanien visste folk inte namnet på den som tillverkade saker, namnen på arbetarna. Hon berättade att i väst kände man bara till namnen på fabrikerna där sakerna tillverkades, människorna som ägde dem och deras barn och barnbarn.”

Sen faller regeringen och inifrånskildringen av att leva under kommunistiskt enpartistyre växlar över till en berättelse om kaos och förvirring som omställningsperioden medför. En helt ny begreppsapparat introduceras i takt med att planekonomin raseras. Nu får hon veta vad girighet och avundsjuka är för något. Tidigare fanns det nästan inga varor att köpa även om man hade pengar, nu finns det varor men inga pengar att köpa för. Hennes familj och släkt har burit på hemligheter som nu uppdagas. Så småningom kommer hon i kontakt med konstigheter som vi här tar för givna: bäst-före-datum, bananer, religion, cv, kundvagnar (varför handla mer än man kan bära?), att ha flera personer att välja mellan när man ska rösta. Friheten som kom var dock som en kallnad maträtt man tog några tuggor av, hungern bestod. De som försöker lämna landet blir nämligen tillbakaskickade.

”Väst hade ägnat decennier åt att kritisera öst för dess stängda gränser, bekostat insatser för att kräva rörelsefrihet, fördömt det omoraliska hos stater som inte erkände rätten att ge sig av. Exilalbaner hade tagit emot som hjältar. Nu behandlades de som brottslingar. […] vilket värde har rätten att ge sig av när det inte finns någon rätt att bli mottagen? Var gränser och murar förkastliga enbart när deras syfte var att hålla människor inne till skillnad från när de höll människor ute?”

Frågan om vad det innebär att vara fri är filosofisk och låter sig inte lätt besvaras. Hur förhåller sig frihet till människans funktioner och behov, vilja, samhälle och lagar? Jag tycker mycket om Ypis nyanserade funderingar som uppmuntrar läsaren att fundera på vad hon själv tycker. Författaren sätter fingret på direkta och indirekta tvång och hur övergången från socialism till liberalism medför förändrade tankesätt och normsystem. Det första hör samman med solidariska ideal exempelvis har en handikappad person inte sig själv att skylla och en socialist ser som moralisk plikt att kollektivt hjälpa personer i nöd. Det liberalistiska synsättet vars ledord är frihet bereder plats för egoism: det är inte mitt fel att hen är i nöd, tänker man.

”Min familj likställde socialismen med förnekelse: en förnekelse av det de egentligen ville vara, av rätten att göra misstag och lära av dem, att utforska världen på sina egna villkor. Jag jämställde liberalismen med brutna löften, en raserad solidaritet, med rätten att ärva privilegier och blunda för orättvisor.”

Mina tankar går till Schopenhauer som påtalade människans bristande förmåga att nöja sig, hennes ständiga jakt: när vi inte har det vi vill ha blir vi frustrerade och när vi har fått det vi vill ha blir vi snabbt uttråkade. Mycket vill ha mer och hur får vi stopp på det? Jag tänker också på Kant som med sin pliktetik lyfter fram att det alltid finns en frihet i ofriheten.

”Vi förlorade aldrig vår inre frihet: friheten att göra det som är rätt.”

Vi som lever i högerlandet Sverige i senkapitalismens era där konkurrens, hårdporr, jaget och aktiemarknaden är prioriterade områden, där allt är till salu för rätt pris och distinktionen mellan människor och varumärken upplöses. Orättvisor, avundsjuka, roffarmentalitet och brottslighet frodas. Av våra tidigare gemensamheter finns nästan inget kvar. Den här boken är lite som plåster på såren. Läs den, annars åker kanske ”kökskniven fram och kittlar lite grann”.

PS Grymt bra översatt av Amanda Svensson. DS

[Emmeline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five round, loving stars for a memoir is almost unheard of for me – in fact it has only happened once before. And I don’t have my copy so I can’t write a proper review. Tsk.

But the basics: Lea Ypi writes of her Albanian childhood under socialism, and her adolescence as the free economy replaced it. What makes this different from what you (certainly I) might expect is her subtlety, her ability to hold multiple truths in mind at once, and above all her voice and sense of humour. A blend of innocence and irony is the tone for both halves of the book, and they really are halves. Reality unfolds against this voice, and reality changes drastically, but the voice doesn’t: it is the same voice telling us of her childhood love of Stalin, of her mother receiving a French feminist delegation in a nightgown which she considers to be eveningwear, of an orphan who thinks she is his mother and wants to go home with her (the real mother is a prostitute who sends money home from Greece).

I read this with a book club, and was surprised that some people found it sad. And yet how could it not be sad, with the anecdote above? I think the book’s peculiar magic is to take material that would be very sad in another book, and transform it into something funny and wondrous. And deeply ironic.

An example: post-fall, a Dutchman comes to town. He is some kind of development expert who has been all over the world. Everyone calls him The Crocodile, because he has one on every shirt. They throw a party of him on Ypi’s street, where they prepare their traditional food, drink their traditional liquor and do their usual dancing. The Crocodile watches and comments, “ah, this is just like in Ghana. This food reminds me of Ecuador. I’ve had this liquor before in Greece.” The people begin to feel like their customs have no value, that they hardly exist, that nothing they have is in fact theirs.

We have all met a Crocodile, I think, and possibly we have all been a Crocodile.

There is a great deal in the 200 pages of this book. A philosophical examination of what freedom means. A truly striking family history. Well-drawn portraits of very different people.

Everyone in the family had their favourite revolution, Ypi writes, just as they had their favourite fruit. Her mother: watermelon and the English revolution. Young Lea: figs and the Russian revolution. Her father says that he sympathizes with all revolutions, but his favourite is yet to come.

[Nasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ντρέπομαι. Και ξέρετε γιατί ντρέπομαι; Διότι μεγαλώνοντας την δεκαετία του '90 στην Θεσσαλονίκη ήταν τριγύρω μου πάρα πολλά άτομα οικονομικοί μετανάστες από την γείτονα χώρα, Αλβανία. Γιατί είχα πολύ καλή φίλη που ήταν από την Αλβανία και κάποια στιγμή χαθήκαμε. Γιατί ακόμα και τώρα πολλοί από αυτούς τους ανθρώπους βρίσκονται στην Ελλάδα και κάνουν δουλειές του ποδαριού ενώ είναι άνθρωποι με σπουδές. Και γιατί ντρέπομαι; Επειδή δεν τους ρώτησα ΠΟΤΕ τι συνέβη στην χώρα τους και έφυγαν, δεν αναρωτήθηκα ποτέ ενεργά γιατί τόσοι οικονομικοί μετανάστες βρήκαν τον δρόμο τους στην Ελλάδα μαζικά την δεκαετία του '90;

Ποτέ δεν είναι αργά, ίσως και εν προκειμένω να είναι, αλλά προσπαθώ να μάθω πράγματα για τους γείτονές μας και αυτό το βιβλίο ήταν άκρως διαφωτιστικό ως προς αυτό. Η Λέα Ούπι μας προσφέρει μιας πρώτης τάξης εικόνα από την κλειδαρότρυπα αυτής της κλειστής χώρας μέσω του αυτοβιογραφικού της αυτού βιβλίου.
Πώς είναι να ζεις κάτω από το καθεστώς του Χότζα στην Αλβανία, πώς είναι να πέφτει αυτό και εσύ να βρίσκεσαι μεταίχμια ανάμεσα σε αυτό που σου είχανε μάθει να πιστεύεις και την νέα κατάσταση; Πιστεύεις στον κομμουνισμό τελικά, τον σοσιαλισμό ή τον καπιταλισμό; Τι γίνεται όταν στην χώρα σου ξεσπάει εμφύλιος μόλις το 1997 λόγω οικονομικής λιτότητας και πυραμίδων!?

Μπορεί το βιβλίο να μην είναι καμία "σπουδαία λογοτεχνία", μιας και στόχος της συγγραφέα δεν είναι να καταπλήξει με τις λέξεις της, όμως είναι άκρως ενδιαφέρων ο τρόπος που παραθέτει τις προσωπικές της εμπειρίες, όχι σαν ξερά δεδομένα για το πώς ήταν η ζωή στην Αλβανία την τάδε χρονική στιγμή, αλλά με βιώματα, όπως η ιστορία με το κουτάκι κοκα κόλας. Ποτέ δεν είχα σκεφτεί τόση ώρα για το τι συμβολίζει ένα κουτάκι κοκα κόλας.

Μου άρεσε που πουθενά δεν παρατήρησα να είναι η συγγραφέας νοσταλγός του παρελθόντος, όμως διάλεξε να κάνει σπουδές πάνω στην φιλοσοφία του μαρξισμού, με στόχο να δει με κριτική ματιά το καθεστώς στο οποίο μεγάλωσε. Μου άρεσε που είχε δόσεις χιούμορ μέσα σε μια δύσκολη πραγματικότητα και που βίωνε την εφηβεία της ως έναν βαθμό ελεύθερη και ως "κανονική έφηβη".

“Socialism had succeeded in ripping the veil off women's head, but not in the minds of their men. It had managed to tear chains carrying crosses from their wives' chests, but those chains still shackled their husbands' brains.”

[Anna Carina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nach 171 Seite breche ich ab und maße mir dennoch eine Bewertung an. Habe das Ende gelesen und um zu erfahren, ob sich der Erzählton ändert, in die Tagebucheinträge aus 1997 hineingeblättert.

Dieses Buch greift mal wieder den Konflikt Dokument vs. Literatur auf.
Ich beantworte das nur aus meiner subjektiven Warte, aus der ich eine eindeutige Erwartungshaltung an Texte habe, die für mich als Literatur durchgehen. Diese wird in diesem Fall von "Frei" nicht erfüllt.

Ypi erzählt retrospektiv als Icherzählerin. Dh. sie versetzt sich in ihr kindliches, jugendliches und später junges Erwachsenen Ich hinein. Es sollte doch anzunehmen sein, dass sich aufgrund dieser Erzählanlage die Komplexität und Beweglichkeit der Sprache ändert. Nein. Das Buch ist von vorne bis hinten in einem einfachen, kindlich, streckenweise naiv, dümmlichen Ton gehalten.
Das funktioniert durchaus in einigen Szenen, die hierdurch völlig absurd erscheinen und diesen Irrsinn des Systems und Verhaltens der Menschen herausschälen. Die ersten 60 Seiten lesen sich recht erbaulich.
Aber, weitestgehend ist diese Entscheidung die Schwäche des Buches.
Kompositorisch ist das ein Totalausfall.
Sie setzt episodische, szenische Ausschnitte aneinander ohne diese sprachlich übergreifend ineinander fließen zu lassen. Die Sprachbeschränkung kann nur zeigen, auf etwas verweisen, im schlimmsten Fall einige Szenen als komödiantisch, banal, ungekonnt wirken lassen. Sie kann niemals, auch nur ansatzweise, einen komplexen philosophischen Gedanken bespielen. Dafür ist die Sprache viel zu eingeschränkt, unbeweglich und geht auch überhaupt nicht tief in die Reflexion hinein.
Der Gesamte Text zerfällt immer mehr in ein dokumentarisches Abarbeiten an historischen Ereignissen und Familienerlebnissen.
Die späteren Tagebucheinträge sind eine neue stilistische Variante. Werden aber weder kommentiert oder reflektiert und ihrer Kürze so stehen gelassen. Nur reines Dokument.
Das Buch ist zudem völlig mit Informationen überladen.
Als Sachtext mag dies zulässig sein, wenn man sich auf knapp 300 Seiten im Schnelldurchgang, mit ein paar Dialogen und Sidekicks aus Erlebnissen, die historischen Ereignisse zwischen den 40ern und 90er Jahren in Albanien um die Ohren hauen lassen will.
Da ich aber niemand bin, der sich solche Art Sachtexte reinzieht bin ich in dem Fall raus und kann kaum etwas mit diesem Text anfangen.
Bevor man mir Interessenlosigkeit vorwirft: diesen Text habe ich bewusst gewählt, da ich zuvor Christa Wolf und Kairos von Erpenbeck las und mich auf einen weiteren Text aus dem Sozialismus freute. Mir geht es darum, dass ich mit dieser Informationsflut nichts anfangen kann, die zu Lasten einer qualitativen Durchdringung des Themas geht und einem Bulimielernen gleich kommt.

Ich bin niemand der auf den Betroffenheitszug aufspringt. Insofern kann Frau Ypi noch so schreckliche Dinge biografisch zu berichten haben. Macht sie das nach meinem Verständnis auf unzureichend literarischem Niveau, wird das auch so bewertet.

Der zusätzliche Stern ist für den dokumentarischen Wert. Als Literatur: 1 Stern.

[Madam Bovaread · Rating 5 out of 5]

O carte despre comunismul din Albania ce oferă o perspectivă unică, mai ales deoarece totul este văzut prin ochii unui copil care încearcă să înțeleagă realitățile regimului totalitar.

Romanul este povestea autobiografică a copilăriei autoarei Lea Ypi, crescută în Albania comunistă a anilor ’80. La vremea respectivă, Albania era condusă de regimul totalitar al lui Enver Hoxha, cunoscut pentru izolarea extremă a țării. Lea crește într-un mediu plin de contradicții, unde ideea de „libertate” este omniprezentă… dar cu un sens total răsturnat.

Lea începe povestea cu convingerea fermă, moștenită de la familia ei și de la propaganda de stat, că Albania este „cea mai liberă țară din lume.” Libertatea, pentru regim, însemna lipsa influenței imperialismului capitalist și faptul că își păstra puritatea ideologică.

Copilăria autoarei este povestită cu candoare și ironie: cum credea că „Stalin era unchiul tuturor copiilor” și cum statuia lui Enver Hoxha din orașul ei părea mai vie decât oamenii.

Prăbușirea comunismului în 1990 și tranziția spre capitalism o fac pe autoare să descopere ca că „libertatea” nu e tocmai ce a visat, iar promisiunile de democrație vin la pachet cu haos, corupție și o nesiguranță constantă. Ea își pune întrebări esențiale despre ce înseamnă să fii cu adevărat liber, întrebări care rezonează adânc cu cititorii din fostele state comuniste.

Romanul nu este doar o poveste despre Albania, ci despre toate țările care au trăit trauma regimurilor totalitare și confuzia libertății post-comuniste. O carte ce o super-recomand!

[Mihaela · Rating 5 out of 5]

E o carte despre viețile noastre, de fapt, sau și despre ale noastre mai bine-zis.
E o carte teribilă, scrisă cu o voce calmă, fals liniștită și ne dăm seama spre sfârșit de lucrul ăsta. Pe mine m-a dat peste cap, m-a făcut să plâng la final, apoi am tot recitit ultimele pagini, încercând să-mi amintesc ce simțeam eu în decembrie 1989 și imediat după aceea, să sap în memoria-mi pentru că nu am avut inspirația să țin un jurnal al acelor zile (cum a făcut albaneza Lea Ypi), m-am întors în tunelul timpului și am mers pe-acolo cu emoție și cu atenție. În afara faptului că m-am întâlnit cu mine la 20 de ani, am priceput din nou că e foarte greu de înțeles TOTUL. Că viața e una singură și că e ireversibilă, da, dar ce am fi putut să facem mai bine? Ce am putea ACUM să facem ca să trăim conform unor valori adevărate, fără prea multe compromisuri și cu idealul libertății tangibil mereu, la orizont?
Lea m-a cucerit, mai ales când a spus că cel mai mult contează acțiunile noastre, realizate în mod corect și fără să ne luăm după circumstanțe. Pentru că nu ne putem alege contextul istoric, nu putem face decât ceea ce ține de noi. Dar ce greu e, nu-i așa? Să știm ce și cum, să fim solidari (mai ales), ca să nu regretăm când e prea târziu. Timpul nu ne așteaptă, trece ca fulgerul și ocazia noastră de a FI se scurge printre crăpăturile istoriei.

[Elena Papadopol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nu stiam multe lucruri legate de istoria Albaniei si cu aceasta ocazie am putut remarca elementele similare cu situatia intalnita si in Romania.
Mi-a placut stilul de scriere, mai ales partea ce prezinta copilaria autoarei - naivitatea se destrama usor-usor, pe masura ce contextul socio-politic se schimba.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History is a fascinating and compelling memoir of growing up in 1980s and 90s Albania before, during, and after the fall of the communist regime. Ypi (which autocorrect insists should be 'you') narrates as her younger self, to very striking effect. As she grows older she starts to understand life around her better, just as it begins to change dramatically. Her perspective and that of her family give a witty insight into daily life under a Stalinist dictatorship, as well as the chaos that followed it. I found Ypi to be an uncommonly thoughtful and observant writer:

When my father spoke of the revolution in general, he got as excited as my grandmother did when she spoke about the French Revolution in particular. In my family, everyone had a favourite revolution, just as everyone had a favourite summer fruit. My mother's favourite fruit was watermelon and her favourite revolution was the English one. Mine were figs and Russian. My father emphasised that he was sympathetic to all revolutions but his favourite was the one that had yet to take place. As to his favourite fruit, it was quince - but it could choke you when it wasn't fully ripe, so he was often reluctant to indulge.

I particularly appreciated her comments on the new vocabulary that replaced communist terminology:

'Civil society' was the new term recently added to the political vocabulary, more or less as a substitute for 'Party'. It was known that civil society had brought the Velvet Revolution to Eastern Europe. It had accelerated the decline of socialism. In our case, the term became popular when the revolution was already complete, perhaps to give meaning to a sequence of events that at first seemed unlikely, then required a label to become meaningful. It joined the other new keywords, such as 'liberalisation', which replaced 'democratic centralism'; 'privatisation', which replaced 'collectivisation'; 'transparency', which replaced 'self-criticism'; 'transition', which stayed the same but now indicated the transition from socialism to liberalism instead of the transition from socialism to communism; and 'fighting corruption', which replaced 'anti-imperialist struggle'.

Another particularly astute and powerful section describes her father's job after the fall of communism, running a port where he's expected to fire many of the workers in the name of efficiency:

My father assumed, like many in his generation, that freedom was lost when other people tell us how to think, what to do, where to go. He soon realised that coercion need not always take such a direct form. Socialism had denied him the possibility to be who he wanted, to make mistakes and learn from them, and to explore the world on his own terms. Capitalism was denying it to others, the people who depended on his decision, who worked in the port. Class struggle was not over. He could understand as much. He did not want the world to remain a place where solidarity is destroyed, where only the fittest survive, and where the price of achievement for some is the destruction of hope in others.

The narrative is at its most powerful and stripped back in chapter 21, in which Ypi recounts the 1997 civil war via extracts from her teenage diary. The whole book is insightful, by turns amusing and moving. I knew nothing much about Albania before reading it, despite being in high school by the time its civil war broke out. Ypi interrogates the concept of freedom via the experiences of transformational political change that she and her family went through. She refuses to draw any simple conclusions and instead invites the reader to consider difficult questions of political ideology and practise. I found Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History extremely readable, thought-provoking, and distinctive. I highly recommend it.