Free: An Amazing History at the End of History
After coming up short last year on my goal to read 52 books, or one book a week, I am back this year to try again!
One of the first books I read this year was Free by Lea Ypi.
Now, there is quite a chance you haven't heard of the book or the writer, as she is an Albanian writer, but this book has been quite a breakthrough for Ypi. Myself, I visited Albania last summer and was recommended this read by a local Albanian student so I decided to give it a try.
History at the end of history
We step into the book when Lea Ypi is still quite young (the book is autobiographical) and grows up in socialist Albania. As the rest of the socialist east is crumbling apart, Albania remains strictly socialist. Ypi grows up during the socialist regime and has never know anything else. She manages to describe vividly what it is like growing up in a country like that. She also shows you exactly the propaganda from the perspective of a child, not knowing that it is propaganda she has been fed.
But Ypi, as she describes it herself, has grown up at the end of history. For unbeknowst to her, the socialist regime is crumbling and falling apart. We hear her speak of protests and she describes her surprise of these protests very well, through the eyes of a brainwashed child. As the regime around her crumbles, Ypi is left to wonder if the entire world she grew up in was a lie.
Is your family truly who you think they are?
As the socialist regime crumbles Ypi is not just faced with the idea that her entire childhood was a lie, but also finds out that her family is not who she thought they were. Speaking the truth to a child can be dangerous, especially if that child is completely engulfed by propaganda from the state. If the child slips up and tells the truth of her family the ramifications could be enormous and mean prison or even death for certain family members.
After the fall of the socialist regime Ypi finds out that her family have not been the socialist supporters they portrayed themselves as. In fact, they are staunch anti-communists and their family has been know for it before the regime came into power. This has also meant that many things available to the strictest part members were always off limit for the Ypi family. You follow Lea Ypi through the book as she realizes that nothing was what it seemed in her childhood.
A triumph of a book
In my opinion this was one of the greatest books I have read in a very long time. Beautifully written Ypi's style takes you straight to Albania during the 90's even if you had no idea what that looked like before picking up this book.
The way she manages to show you a brutal socialist regime from the eyes of an innocent child means that you get a completely new perspective while reading this book. I would greatly recommend it to anyone!
