Indignity: A Life Reimagined

by Lea Ypi

Named a Book of the Year Financial Times, Sunday Times, Prospect, TLS, Washington Post, NPR


'A magical literary feat and one of the most touching books I’ve read this year' Stuart Jeffries, Spectator
'Remarkable, beguiling and moving' William Boyd, Observer

An imaginative investigation into historical injustice, dignity and truth -- told through the story of a family from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the dawn of Communism in the Balkans

‘There is something about the human spirit, she would say, that withstands all attempts at offence, injury or humiliation … we call it dignity’

When Lea Ypi discovers a photo of her grandmother, Leman, honeymooning in the Alps in 1941 posted by a stranger on social media, she is faced with unsettling questions. Growing up, she was told records of her grandmother’s youth were destroyed in the early days of communism in Albania. But there Leman was with her husband, Asllan glamorous newlyweds while World War II raged.

What follows is a thrilling reimagining of the past, as we are transported to the vanished world of Ottoman aristocracy, the making of modern Greece and Albania, a global financial crisis, the horrors of war and the dawn of communism in the Balkans. While investigating the truth about her family, Ypi grapples with uncertainty. Who is the real Leman Ypi? What made her move to Tirana as a young woman and marry a socialist who sympathized with the Popular Front while his father led a collaborationist government? And why was she smiling in the winter of 1941?

By turns epic and intimate, profound and gripping, Indignity explores what it means to survive in an age of extremes. It reveals the fragility of truth, both personal and political, and the cost of decisions made against the tide of history. Through secret police reports of communist spies, court depositions, and Ypi’s memories of her grandmother, we move between present and past, archive and imagination, fact and fiction. Ultimately, she asks, what do we really know about the people closest to us? And with what moral authority do we judge the acts of previous generations?

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

345 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 4, 2025

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

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

This is a much messier book than Ypi's Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History but I don't think it could have been anything else. Whereas Free told a single story, here Ypi is doing different things: she's giving an account of her own archival investigations into the life of her paternal grandmother, Leman (who we met in Free); she's imaginatively re-constructing the lives of Leman, her husband Asllan and their generation of Albanian friends caught between the WW2 invasions of first fascist Italy and then Nazi Germany followed by Albania under Hoxha's socialist rule; and she's reconstructing the bureaucratic life as found in the documents and files of the former State Security Service.

What is striking is how complicated twentieth century politics were. Leman was of Albanian ethnicity but had never visited that country, was born and lived in Salonica (Thessaloniki) which was then part of the Ottoman Empire before becoming Greek in 1912, and spoke French. After Greece was occupied by Nazi Germany in WW2, she went to Albania for the first time, met her husband and lived there for the rest of her life. These shifting borders, wars, occupations and identity markers on different axes show how inadequate far-right simplistic narratives of who 'belongs' where are.

I can see why Ypi can only tell this story in a hybrid format: part memoir, part imaginative reconstruction, part archival investigation, no single mode can stand alone. This delves deeper into the characters we met in Free as well as being attentive to the family connection to Enver Hoxha and the complicated political anti-fascist groupings.

All the same, this doesn't have quite the same charm and force as the simpler and more personal Free - but Ypi's intelligent meditation on how to reconstruct history and offer dignity to both the past and to the inhabitants thereof makes this eminently worth reading.

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley

[Ruben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ayayay, I had such high expectations for this one, but never got into the story as it just jumps all over the place.

Lea Ypi dives into her family history, in particular that of her grandmother, Leman Ypi, who grew up in an aristocratic family in Thessaloniki in the final years of the Ottoman Empire and then moved to Albania. When a photo of her grandparents surfaces on social media, enjoying the slopes of Cortina d'Ampezzo in Mussolini's Italy in the middle of the war, Ypi decides to try and track down the truth behind the many secrets of Leman's life.

It's not that the material isn't nteresting. It is! But the story is told in completely the wrong way. For some reason, Ypi chooses to fictionalize (or 'reimagine' as it says in the title) Leman's life and so we get a sort of novel alternated by non-fiction sections.

It doesn't work, mostly because Ypi is a better non-fiction writer than a novelist. And also because she wants to tell too many little anecdotes that mostly just distract from the main thread (except there isn't really a main thread). If there was not much material the archives wish to release, then surely there is more than enough fascinating general information about this period of time in this part of Europe to write a good non-fiction.

Lea Ypi wrote a brilliant memoir a few years ago, Free, which I gave 5 stars. If you dislike this, please still read Free!

[Kristy · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Stars

I loved hearing about Ypi’s connection with her grandmother and her search for the truth of her grandmother’s past. However, a lot of this read more like historical fiction and not an investigative look into the past. I suppose that should be evident by the word “Reimagined” in the title, but I missed it. Still, I knew so little about Albania and its past, that learned a lot throughout the book.

I received an advanced copy through Netgalley in return for an honest review.

[B. H. · Rating 2 out of 5]

My review of Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History remains my most popular contribution to this foresaken website. I still stand by most of it. That book was fun, insightful, and well-written.

I am very disappointed to say that Indignity has none of the charm or sharpness of Ypi's first book. I will admit that I picked up the book with some reservations. I have grown rather weary of this particular genre of memoir/autofiction/auto-theory (these terms may not be interchangeable, but there is no particular rigor to their classification either). The "restoring truth and justice to the life of a forgotten matriarch." The "no archive can restore us" ethos of any such works. I have read far too many, and unfortunately Indignity does little to breathe fresh life into an increasingly stale genre.

But it should have been able to. The story we can glimpse from the material Ypi has pieced together is, prima facie, fascinating. The life of a woman at the intersection of crumbling empires and devastating world wars. The problem, I am sorry to say, is Ypi's writing. This book is at its best when Ypi grapples with her own project, partly because there is more uncertainty there, a lot more ambiguity. But when she enters the territory of the fictional, she stumbles. The story becomes stilted, the language sounds like a bad translation, and the characters (modeled for the most part after real people) have little depth. There is an alchemy to fiction that is clearly missing from Ypi's repertoire as a fine nonfiction writer and it does this book a huge disservice.

[Grandma Susan]

DNF. Didn’t enjoy the narrator. Difficult to concentrate on the story.

[Bagus · Rating 4 out of 5]

It sounds exactly like something Lea Ypi would do: mixing a discussion of philosophical concepts with her own personal history. In her previous book, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, she reflects on the meaning of freedom while retelling her experience growing up in the final years of communist rule in Albania. This time, the central theme is indignity, explored through the life of her grandmother, Leman Ypi. As with Free, the philosophical inquiry is never abstract. It is rooted in lived experience, memory and the uneasy relationship between private lives and public judgment.

The book begins with a Facebook photo of Leman Ypi honeymooning with her husband, Asllan Ypi, in Cortina in 1941, in what is now part of the Italian Alps. The image, stripped of context, attracted hostile interpretations from online commenters, especially in light of the mixed and often critical reception of Free in Albania. Some accused Lea’s grandmother of being a collaborator, enjoying luxury in the middle of wartime. Lea, who had never seen the photo before, found these accusations deeply incompatible with the modest, reserved grandmother she grew up with. That tension becomes the starting point of the book: how easily dignity can be undermined when fragments of the past are judged through the lens of the present.

In an attempt to restore her grandmother’s dignity (the dead, after all, cannot defend themselves), Lea turns to archival research. She visits the archives in Tirana, which house documents collected by the Sigurimi during the communist era—only recently declassified in 2022—and later the archives in Thessaloniki. The narrative oscillates between these archival encounters, excerpts from official records, and Lea’s own reconstruction of her grandmother’s life. I found the reconstructed narrative the most compelling part of the book, even though it sometimes reads like a novel. It’s not always clear where documented fact ends and interpretation begins, but that uncertainty feels deliberate rather than careless. At times, I honestly found myself thinking that Lea Ypi should try writing fiction.

Leman Ypi was born Leman Leskoviku in Salonica (present-day Thessaloniki, Greece) in 1918, at a moment when empires were collapsing and new nation-states were emerging across Europe. Her birth coincided with the death of her grandfather, Ibrahim Pasha, a former Ottoman official who reportedly died after overeating baklava prepared to celebrate her arrival. To befit his long service to the Ottoman Empire, his wife, Mediha Hanim, insisted that the official cause of death be recorded as a heart attack, a small but telling act of protecting honour and reputation. These anecdotes, while personal, are carefully placed within broader historical shifts, showing how private lives are shaped by political change.

At eighteen, Leman moved to Albania, not out of necessity or hardship, but seemingly out of a desire for independence. Although ethnically Albanian, she had never lived in Albania before. Lea suggests that Leman wanted to escape expectations, to choose her own path, including choosing her own husband rather than submitting to an arranged courtship. The man she married, Asllan Ypi, was closely connected to power. He was the son of Xhafer bey Ypi, who briefly served as prime minister of Albania, and had studied law in Paris. Through him, Leman encountered many political figures of the time, including a young Enver Hoxha, years before he became the dictator of communist Albania. Lea recounts these moments with striking sensory detail, such as Leman remembering the smell of “lavender and onions” on Hoxha’s breath.

The rest of the book unfolds like a slow, unsettling search for who Leman Ypi really was, and whether it is even possible to fully defend someone’s dignity after their death. The archives reveal contradictions, silences and moral ambiguities. There are no clear heroes or villains, only people navigating dangerous political terrain. In the end, Lea concludes that truth lies in the reconstruction of facts and in how we interpret them. Dignity, she suggests, does not come from purity or innocence, but from the capacity to act with moral intention, even under exigent circumstances.

[Sam Cheng · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enter Ypi’s Grandmother Leman Ypi Series without having read Free. Unable, then, to comment on the ways the two books overlap, the Albanian academic provides readers with ample material to consider in Indignity. While Indignity is shelved as “history,” “nonfiction,” “memoir,” and “biography,” it would perhaps be appropriate to include “fiction” to the list. I am unsure of how Ypi views the genre “autofiction”; assuming the term is acceptable, the author sections her autofictitious project about Leman (d. 2006) into three parts.

Part one opens with Ypi’s backstory of coming across a photo of her grandmother online during her honeymoon in “Cortina d’Ampezzo, in the Italian Alps . . . in the winter of 1941.” Shared anonymously and subsequently critiqued by online commenters, Ypi digs into Leman’s history. She hopes to understand how “the happiest person alive” pictured simultaneously communicates Leman’s “utter indifference to global events of former years.” The photo seems to contract her memory of her grandmother—a Muslim woman who is a paragon of virtue—and raises questions about her political affiliation—Was she a communist? A fascist? If so, Ypi would also need to reconcile her personal position as a proponent of Marxist freedom with Leman’s ideology. A controlling concern in Ypi’s research at the Security Service archives in Albania (and at all of her archival visits) is to maintain an affirmation of her grandma’s dignity, an attribute that Leman believed distinguished human beings from animals, trees, and stones.

Part two marks the transition from Salonica to Tirana; the story grabbed my interest when Leman meets Asllan, son of Xhafer Ypi, the former prime minister of Albania. It is this season of life that the files on Leman mark her as a Greek informant and fascist collaborator. Part three covers Zafo’s (Ypi’s father’s) birth, Asllan’s prison sentence, and Leman’s deportation from Tirana.

The introductory sections of the three parts, written from Ypi’s perspective, hold the entire work together. I found these sections the most intriguing. Ypi lists her internal dialogue and processing of the facts she accumulates up to that point in her research timeline, often with the help of Aristotle (I wished for more of this). If I’m not mistaken, Ypi doesn’t explicitly demarcate her methodology as she recounts the stories her grandmother, Lenan, passed down and discovered through archival research. Unlike Jen’s clear statements about her creative liberties in Bad Bad Girl, Ypi seems to construct significant portions of Lenin’s life, but her method is not as transparent. Readers may be aided in a prologue with information about Ypi’s intermezzo sections throughout the book. These ongoing insertions give Indignity an obvious meta-narrative as a touchstone for the author’s voice and factual information in the story. Leman’s migration may offer readers like me a story (fact mixed with fiction) that can help one remember the historical and political moments in an Albanian family’s life during WWII.

I rate Indignity 3.5 stars.

My thanks to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and NetGalley for an ARC.

[Adam Lantz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Free in dignity.
That is a sentence that will stay with me for life.

Lea Ypi’s two books are difficult to describe because of how profoundly they have connected with my soul and reshaped how I see the world. Free and Indignity: A Life Reimagined resonated with me on a level few books ever have. If there are two works I would want to carry with me forever, it would be these.

Ypi writes about freedom and dignity not as abstract ideas, but as lived experiences—fragile, costly, and deeply human. She reminds us that dignity is owning the consequences of our choices. Every choice has them, and whether we keep our dignity depends on how we face and accept those consequences—or how we lose our dignity by running from them.

I want to end this review with a passage that has stayed with me:

“She knows that every action has a cost, and she accepts the cost, finding comfort in the thought—and it is only ever a thought—that she’s trying to rule over adversity with moral force. The expression by which this force presents itself in the world, the troubled poet goes on to say, we call dignity.”

[Mafalda Escada · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stakes were high after having read Free - one of the greatest books I have ever read. Indignity is a beautiful and beautifully made book. Lea Ypi's honesty and humbleness regarding the research process makes this book an intimate book which project the reader is led to truly care about. The fine line between fiction and reality is so fine you sometimes forget about Lea Ypi's struggles in the archives and find yourself reading the book as a novel. However, the fiction side falls short. Or, maybe, it falls short where Free thrives: transporting the reader to multiple realities, multiple perspectives in the most simple and natural ways.

[Greta · Rating 4 out of 5]

reading this book, i couldn’t help bringing my own family history into it, at least when it comes to communism, and maybe that’s why my expectations weren’t fully met, even though i’m not quite sure what i was hoping for. i think i wanted glimpses, or at least a sense of what my ancestors’ lives might have been like.

i got genuinely excited when lea ypi mentions sabiha kasimati. that’s exactly where a connection to my own history could have emerged, my great-grandfather was executed together with sabiha kasimati, falsely accused alongside other intellectuals after a government-staged bombing. for a moment i thought, this is it, but then i remembered, this is was about leman ypi, not my family🥸😇

what i missed was a closer look at the research process but also more about the communist period, which she rushes through. realizing that the protagonists actually knew enver hoxha personally and met him in real life was striking, and i wanted to know more about their hopes and disappointments. knowing how pervasive despair was in those years, and that my own family’s history overlaps with similar experiences (e.g. imprisonment and deportation), this is exactly the kind of insight i wish i could have about my own ancestors, and it felt like an important part that was missing.

i didn’t have major issues with the mix of fact and fiction, and i enjoyed learning about the complexity of the the political situation.

[Clara]

Hade först lite svårt för det påhittade eller vad man ska säga, men såg syftet med det mer och mer. Mycket bra om sanning, tillhörighet och vem som äger historieberättandet, men också om förlikning och försoning.

[Alex Pelletier · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5*

[Marthe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like Free, Indignity is exciting. I learned a lot about a period in history that I knew nothing about, but Lea Ypi effortlessly provides context, impressions and facts as I follow her grandmother's upbringing in Salonica. At the same time, Lea Ypi is also a philosopher, and the book is a formal experiment about what it means to be in history, to interpret, not to know, not to lose dignity.

[Sophie Hanck · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing was dreadfully dry. Felt like a bit of a waste of such incredible material (Ypi's search through archives for the truth about her grandmother's identity and activities in the 30s and 40s, an exploration of Albania and Greece from the end of the Ottoman Empire through WWII).

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

„Es kommt nicht darauf an, was wir erinnern, sondern wie.“ Bereits im ersten Roman Frei hat mich Leman Ypi, die Großmutter der Autorin, fasziniert. In Aufrecht folgt Lea Ypi diesem Leitsatz ihrer Großmutter und erzählt die Geschichte einer Frau, die sich in außergewöhnlichen Zeiten behauptet. Der Roman folgt Lemans Leben durch die großen Umbrüche des 20. Jahrhunderts, vom Ende des Osmanischen Reiches und dem Bevölkerungsaustausch zwischen Griechenland und der Türkei über die autoritäre Herrschaft König Zogs und die nationalsozialistische Besatzung bis hin zur autoritär-sozialistischen Diktatur Enver Hoxhas.

Lemans Leben ist zwar von Beginn an mit Privilegien verbunden, doch Ypi betont von Anfang an die feministische Selbstbehauptung ihrer Großmutter. Leman strebt nach Wissen, zieht mit 18 allein nach Albanien, findet Arbeit, macht schließlich ihrem zukünftigen Ehemann selbst den Heiratsantrag und sorgt, als ihr Mann in politischer Gefangenschaft war, allein für ihren Sohn. Keine dieser Entscheidungen wird als heroische Geste erzählt, sondern als beharrlicher Akt der Selbstbestimmung.

Während sich Frei vor allem mit Fragen der Freiheit auseinandersetzte, rückt in Aufrecht die Würde ins Zentrum. Ypi beschreibt Leman als moralisch integren Menschen, pflichtbewusst und mitfühlend. Sie erklärt sich nicht und sie rechtfertigt sich nicht. Stattdessen vermittelt sie ihrer Enkelin eine Vorstellung von Würde, die eng mit der Bewahrung von Handlungsfähigkeit und moralischer Verantwortung verbunden ist, unabhängig von den äußeren Umständen.

Besonders deutlich wird das in den Passagen, in denen Leman darauf beharrt, dass jeder Lebensweg auf Entscheidungen zurückgeht. Gute wie schlechte, bewusst getroffene oder teuer erzwungene Entscheidungen. Glück, so ihre Überzeugung, sei oft nur ein anderer Name für verweigerte Verantwortung. Würde zeigt sich hier nicht als abstraktes Ideal, sondern als Haltung. Im Festhalten daran, sich selbst als handelndes Subjekt zu begreifen.

Gerade diese Konzeption von Würde, die stark an moralische Autonomie gebunden ist, wirft jedoch Fragen auf. Denn im Schatten autoritärer und totalitärer Herrschaft wirkt eine solche Setzung fragil. Was bedeutet es, von moralischen Absichten zu sprechen, wenn Handlungsspielräume systematisch zerstört, Entscheidungen erzwungen und Lebenswege gebrochen werden? Der Roman deutet diese Spannung an, löst sie jedoch nicht vollständig auf.

Ich bin gerne in die von Ypi gezeichnete Welt eingetaucht und hatte kein Problem damit, dass die Grenze zwischen Fiktion und Geschichte im Roman offen bleibt.

Ganz folgen konnte ich jedoch Ypis abschließenden Überlegungen zur Würde nicht. Möglicherweise liegt dies daran, dass der letzte Abschnitt über das Leben im sozialistischen Albanien vergleichsweise knapp ausfällt. Es bleibt offen, wie Leman mit der langjährigen Inhaftierung ihres Mannes umgegangen ist, welche Perspektiven sie im Alter entwickelt hat oder wie sie die postkommunistische Zeit erlebt. Dieser Teil des Romans wirkt für mich etwas unvollständig, als würde ein Lebensabschnitt, der für das Verständnis von Lemans Haltung zentral sein könnte, zu früh abbrechen. Vielleicht muss ich aber auch Frei mit diesem Blick noch mal lesen.

[Klea]

Excerpts

You could tell it was important by the amount of terror it had provoked: terror usually went hand in hand with a strong desire to save humanity, she had explained.

Leman did not believe in luck. She was
convinced that what people experience as luck, or call that, is simply a way of converting human decisions into mysterious natural forces for the sake of reconciling oneself with their
consequences. She insisted that somehow, somewhere down the line a choice is always made: it could be a good choice or a bad one, made lightly or at some cost, referring to the views of a single person or of many individuals acting in concert, a choice made recently or in the distant past. But a choice it was, always, without fail. It was tempting to call it luck, she said, since luck is impersonal: there is nobody to thank when it benefits us, and no reason to feel resentful if it fails. Luck is just denial of responsibility by another name.

'You're a good man, but if you'd paid my bill, I'd have to thank you for the rest of my life. What dignity is left to a man who must be forever grateful?'

If your question is whether I have a moral conscience, the answer has to be no. I don't think of morality in that way. As far as I'm concerned, goodness, justice, humanity, they're just words, the words of resentment, the thoughts needed to express the victims' feelings of frustration, the unbearable sense of being stuck. They're elevated to sound noble, dig-nified, as if there was anything special about us, anything that sets humans apart from all the other animals.

For a long time, she had wrestled with the idea of keeping the news secret, thinking that perhaps she owed him more compassion than truth.

I read somewhere that the root of the word 'humanity' is the Latin humale ('to bury'). Perhaps this is the ultimate meaning of being human: remembering the dead in the right way.

She sees everything, experiences everything - the fall of empires, the rise of nations, the trading of people, war and nothingness, the collapse of utopia. She knows that every action has a cost, and she accepts the cost, finding comfort in the thought - and it is only ever a thought - that she's trying to rule over adversity with moral force. The expression by which this force presents itself into the world, the troubled poet goes on to say, we call dignity.

If interpretation is always the result of ideology, manipu-lation, propaganda, how do I know I'm even thinking my own thoughts?

And, most dangerous of all, isn't all culture exactly that, ferrying the dead back into our world without their consent?

[Andreea · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 rounded down

I was first pulled into Lea Ypi’s Indignity by the writing and the super interesting premise: an incursion into Albanian history, from the Ottoman Empire to the present. The first half was captivating, but I lost interest in the second half, as I felt the main character - Leman Ypi - had a weaker voice and the borders between story, history, and reality were blurred.

The premise of the book is strong: a photograph of Ypi’s grandmother, Leman, resurfaces. It was taken in the 1930s on her honeymoon, where she looks happy and free. That one image makes Ypi ask difficult questions: was her grandmother allowed to be happy at that time? Was she a partisan of fascism? Or is history more complicated than that?

From there, Ypi builds Leman’s life through archives and fiction, putting together her story from her childhood to her death. The book blends personal history with broader political history, moving through the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Second World War, the rise of communism in Albania, and into the present. The big question remains: how much of this is true, and how much is invention? Can archives, many of them produced by regimes of control, be trusted?

The first part is captivating. The writing is strong, the pace steady, and the detail on Albanian history is excellent. I didn’t know much about Albania before this, and the book gave me a better sense of its shifting politics, its relationship with Greece, and the role of occupation during the war. There are also powerful sections on the dehumanisation of Jews before the Holocaust.

But the second half lost me. The politics are presented more as part of conversations than storytelling; Leman’s voice is not as powerful as she marries and has a child. I found it harder to stay engaged. One thing I also felt strongly: if you write about the Holocaust then, you need to take as strong a position on the one happening today. I expected more from Ypi on Israel's genocide in Gaza. She has condemned Israeli politics on social media, but I expected a stronger stance.

Verdict: Indignity raises important questions about memory, archives, and truth, and Ypi’s writing is excellent. But the second half loses momentum, and the silence on current events is noticeable. Still, it’s worth reading if you want history, family, and politics brought together in a complicated, unfinished way.

[Stiv Mucollari · Rating 5 out of 5]

(4.5) Part historical fictional novel, part philosophy. The strongest part is the philosophy. “Facts can only be reliable if one trusts the mechanisms through which they are transmitted, if error is no longer possible. I have no faith in my own endeavour, in the superiority of the present to the past. If interpretation is always the result of ideology, manipulation, propaganda, how do I know I'm even thinking my own thoughts? If the harms of the past find ways to linger in the present, how can morality still act as a reliable guide?”

The novel lands, but not as well as it could, because writing fiction isn’t her strength. I’m giving her a pass on that, because I’m biased and because reading historical fiction about Albania in the 1930s is so rare in Western literature that I applaud the effort.

One more great quote: ‘Albania ... Sigurimi ... Greek spy ... Salonica ... Constantinople ... Ottoman Empire,' Eva muses, tracing circles with her index finger on my desk, like a child connecting scattered dots to form a picture. Everything goes back to the Ottoman Empire, doesn't it? Sometimes I wonder: is it even dead?’

[Jesper Svensson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I genombrottsromanen "Fri" berättade Lea Ypi om sin uppväxt i 1980-talets Albanien och om landets utveckling efter befrielsen från kommunismen. I "Förödmjukelse" backar hon bandet, och försöker pussla ihop sina farföräldrars livsöden med hjälp av den kommunistiska säkerhetstjänstens arkiv.

När seklet var ungt var Ypis släkt välmående och rörde sig ledigt mellan salongerna i Thessaloniki och Tirana. Och det är i skildringen av den turbulenta situationen på Balkan under det tidiga 1900-talet som boken är som bäst. Det är både spännande och lärorikt att, genom släkten Ypis dramatiska öden, få följa Albaniens strävan efter självständighet i spillrorna av det osmanska riket. Från kung Zogs kortvariga monarki till ockupationerna under andra världskriget och hur sedan kommunisterna – anförda av den, enligt uppgift, lökluktande Enver Hoxha – tog makten och inledde sitt skräckvälde. Att Ypis farfar var skolkamrat med Hoxha hjälpte inte: han hamnade ändå i arbetsläger.

"Förödmjukelse" är en bra bok att läsa för alla som vill förstå lite mer av den myllrande mosaik som detta hörn av Europa utgör. Och för alla som behöver bli påminda om angiverisamhällets fasor.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Després del seu primer i extraordinari assaig sobre la història de la seva família i de l’Albània d’Enver Hoxha, aquest segon volum es llegeix com un capbussament en la història de la seva àvia. Filla il·lustrada i precoç de l’elit musulmana a la Salònica d’entre guerres, l’autora intenta reconstruir les seves passes. De la infància burgesa, a la rebel·lia adolescent. La migració forçada cap al país que mai va arribar a ser el seu. La guerra, la pulsió socialista i, finalment, la repressió i la dictadura que tan bé ens va explicar en el seu primer llibre.

Tanmateix, l’estructura del llibre no acaba de funcionar. Els primers capítols es fan llargs. Els girs de la història es descabdellen en un desigual aiguabarreig entre assaig i novel·la, sense saber mai on és un i on és l’altre. Sense saber què és recreació, què és invenció i imaginació. Els salts temporals tampoc no acaben d’ajustar bé. Fins i tot molts moments d’interpretació sobre la història de la vida de Leman Ypi se’ns mostren contrafets, innecessaris o apressats. Pitjor: avorrits.

Algú va dir que en el capitalisme, les seqüeles es produeixen fins que el valor marginal de l’última obra esdevé negatiu. Irònicament, aquesta podria ser la darrera seqüela en forma de biografia sobre la seva família. Com a lector crec que és en el gènere assagístic on realment excel·leix.

[Grace -thewritebooks]

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Press UK for an eARC in exchange for an honest review

Starting this book was like jumping into a swimming pool fully clothed, I was immediately out of my depth and being bogged down by everything I didn't understand. I have some understanding of world war history through school, but will freely admit there are many areas that my knowledge doesn't touch upon, I would say with certainty that Albania comes under that umbrella.
Despite my complete lack of prior knowledge, the young character of Leman was very entertaining from the moment we met her and I loved following her story as she grew up into a somewhat untypical teenager. And through this, I gradually chipped away at the political backgrounds that were unfamiliar to me until the point towards the end where I began to read with some fluidity, able to identify some of the larger pieces on the European chess board.
There were also sections in the novel that examined philosophy and morality of Truth and the accessibility of information. What should be shared and what should be kept secret, what do we consider as 'in the wrong'? Interesting stuff!

[Jovana Marović]

Indignity moves between archive and memory, the personal and the political, exposing how history is shaped as much by what is silenced as by what is recorded. With honesty, sharp irony, and a deeply feminist sensibility, Lea Ypi explores identity, public perception, and the weight of inherited narratives, showing that dignity is not preserved by a ‘pure’ past but by our willingness to confront its stains, question patriarchal legacies, and make conscious choices in the present.

[Julia Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed how Ypi combined both her experiences and reflections from the archives with the true and re-imagined stories of her grandmother. Having spent the last semester trying to parse through and better understand the population exchanges and transfers at the end of the Ottoman empire, Ypi's book was so helpful in gaining a fuller picture of what that experience was like for individuals on the ground.

[Jens · Rating 2 out of 5]

I jämförelse med Fri bleknar Förödmjukelse bort till ett försök att gräva vidare på en grop som redan är i stort sätt uttömd. Kanske räckte den med en bok för att mätta mig på albanska historieskildringar men utöver skildringen av Tyskarnas militäriska och kulturella invasion av Tiriana hade jag svårt att koncentrera mig. Det kan inte heller hjälpas att bli gripen av den mängd skarpa, välvilliga och drivna unga människor som fängslats och mördad av auktoritära regimer.

[Elly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drieeneenhalve ster vind ik eigenlijk de beste beoordeling. Het is heel soepel geschreven maar de overgang steeds tussen fictie en non-fictie is te scherp en eigenlijk komt Ypi ondanks al haar dossieronderzoek niet heel erg dichtbij haar grootmoeder

[Laura Scheffer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Teleurstellend vervolg op Free. Nu schrijft ze over haar oma en de zoektocht naar haar verhaal. Vooral dat laatse zit het verhaal in de weg.
Had meer verwacht na het mooi Free.
Eigenlijk 2,5 sterren waard

[Saskia van Rumt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Als groot fan van haar boek Vrij keek ik uit naar een nieuw boek van Ypi. Dit keer duikt ze in het leven van haar oma Leman. Een boeiend verhaal over wat een oma haar kleindochter vertelde en passages uit archieven die niet altijd overeenkomen. Ook dit boek is goed en heel interessant in de tijdsgeest in Albanië. Maar niet net zo goed als Vrij. Maar die heb ik misschien ook wel op een erg hoog voetstuk geplaatst.

[Magdalena K · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was a fictionalized history tale (unlike the stupendous first person account in Free); still captivating mostly due to the unbelievably complex history of the Ottoman Balkan nations which happened just over a century ago, but not the best narration vehicle for Ypi.

[Gayle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learned so much from this!

[Anna-Marie Ahn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting perspective of Albanian history, but Ypi’s method of reimagining her grandmother’s past like a novel didn’t work for me