2
0
Support the library.
Your support helps keep books free for everyone ❤️
Sponsored
Synopsis
For precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi, Albania’s Soviet-style socialism held the promise of a preordained future, a guarantee of security among enthusiastic comrades. That is, until she found herself clinging to a stone statue of Joseph Stalin, newly beheaded by student protests.Communism ...
For precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi, Albania’s Soviet-style socialism held the promise of a preordained future, a guarantee of security among enthusiastic comrades. That is, until she found herself clinging to a stone statue of Joseph Stalin, newly beheaded by student protests.
Communism had failed to deliver the promised utopia. One’s “biography”—class status and other associations long in the past—put strict boundaries around one’s individual future. When Lea’s parents spoke of relatives going to “university” or “graduating,” they were speaking of grave secrets Lea struggled to unveil. And when the early ’90s saw Albania and other Balkan countries exuberantly begin a transition to the “free market,” Western ideals of freedom delivered chaos: a dystopia of pyramid schemes, organized crime, and sex trafficking.
With her elegant, intellectual, French-speaking grandmother; her radical-chic father; and her staunchly anti-socialist, Thatcherite mother to guide her through these disorienting times, Lea had a political education of the most colorful sort—here recounted with outstanding literary talent. Now one of the world’s most dynamic young political thinkers and a prominent leftist voice in the United Kingdom, Lea offers a fresh and invigorating perspective on the relation between the personal and the political, between values and identity, posing urgent questions about the cost of freedom.
Communism had failed to deliver the promised utopia. One’s “biography”—class status and other associations long in the past—put strict boundaries around one’s individual future. When Lea’s parents spoke of relatives going to “university” or “graduating,” they were speaking of grave secrets Lea struggled to unveil. And when the early ’90s saw Albania and other Balkan countries exuberantly begin a transition to the “free market,” Western ideals of freedom delivered chaos: a dystopia of pyramid schemes, organized crime, and sex trafficking.
With her elegant, intellectual, French-speaking grandmother; her radical-chic father; and her staunchly anti-socialist, Thatcherite mother to guide her through these disorienting times, Lea had a political education of the most colorful sort—here recounted with outstanding literary talent. Now one of the world’s most dynamic young political thinkers and a prominent leftist voice in the United Kingdom, Lea offers a fresh and invigorating perspective on the relation between the personal and the political, between values and identity, posing urgent questions about the cost of freedom.
You May Also Like
No Life for a Lady
Agnes Morley Cleaveland
Wait Until Spring, Bandini
John Fante
The Proof of the Pudding
Rhys Bowen
AI Programming for Kids and Teens: Inspire Young Creators to Build Real-World Projects Without Boring Coding Exercises
Dan Maskins
Amsterdam
Ian McEwan
Destined Mate (Twisted Fate Trilogy Book 1)
Jen L. Grey
Biography Picks
View All
The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien's Creation
Michael D. C. Drout
From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir
Lisa Marie Presley
Medgar & Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story that Awakened America
Joy-Ann Reid
Bad Mormon: A Memoir
Heather Gay
Last Rites
Ozzy Osbourne
Hope in Action: A Memoir About the Courage to Lead
Sanna Marin