Lea Ypi. <i>Free: Coming of Age at the End of History</i>

Lea Ypi is an Albanian academic in the field of political theory and thought. Apart from her teaching responsibilities at the London School of Economics and the Australian National University, Ypi is well known in academic circles for her publications within her field of expertise, such as Kant and Colonialism: Historical and Critical Perspectives (coedited with Katrin Flikschuh, Oxford University Press, 2014), Migration in Political Theory: The Ethics of Movement and Membership (coedited with Sarah Fine, Oxford University Press, 2016), and Architectonic of Reason: Purposiveness and Systematic Unity in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Oxford University Press, 2021). In 2021, Ypi published the memoir Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, which gained recognition beyond academia and received a number of awards.In particular, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History has been awarded with the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Award. Additionally, the memoir was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award, the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, and the Gordon Burn Prize, while it was awarded the title of the Best Book of the Year by several newspapers (among them the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Guardian, and the Sunday Times).The memoir Free: Coming of Age at the End of History narrates from a first-person perspective the author’s memories and experiences coming of age in a country in transition and the definition(s) of freedom in this process. The book is divided into two main parts, covering the period before and after the collapse of communism in Albania and the country’s transition to a multiparty state. Ypi, through her recollections from her school and family life, offers insights from life in the era of Enver Hoxha’s regime and during and after the events that followed the December 1990 demonstrations. In the framework of these recollections, Ypi discusses the perceptions and definition of being free and how these perceptions changed during Albania’s transition to the new era. The following excerpts from the book under review featured the different understanding of freedom during the communist era:While in the aftermath of the fall of communism in Albania, freedom has gained a new form: “When freedom finally arrived, it was like a dish served frozen. We chewed little, swallowed fast and remained hungry.”Apart from the redefinition of freedom, it is apparent that it was not only Enver Hoxha’s regime that collapsed, it was also Ypi’s world that fell apart:Ypi’s book is well written and difficult to put aside. Due to the extensive publicity and recognition, the Free: Coming of Age at the End of History has received both rave and negative reviews. The latter mainly from the author’s country of origin, as Ypi’s memoir was mistaken as an apology to communism. But, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History is not a history or an academic book and it does not claim to be one either. It is an autobiographical novel, which provides personal/family experiences from a period of Albanian history that has not been sufficiently explored.Ypi’s memoir has already triggered public discussion, and its translation into 20 languages, hopefully, will soon bring more publications that account for this period of Albanian history. Future scholarly and nonacademic publications will enrich relevant literature through historical data and personal and collective narratives. These works could potentially lead to an increased understanding of events that affected both Albania and her neighboring countries. Additionally, they may contribute to an increased understanding of the complexity of past events, including the complicated nature of defining global values, such as freedom.