Freeeeeedom

Nice autobiography of a childhood lived through a period of upheaval, transformation and violence. It was interesting to read about the authors childhood faith in Hoxhaism and how her beliefs developed as Albania changed. The book is a critique of the lived experience of socialism as well as Western concepts of freedom which is a refreshing angle.

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Intriguing story let down by narrator

This is an incredibly informative and enlightening story of Ypi's childhood in Albania, written with deftness and empathy, but unfortunately the audibook was let down by the narrator. I found their narration frustrating, their use of accents very odd. Quite a few times I considered giving up the audiobook to read the physical copy instead, so I didn't have to read through this narrator's voice.

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The struggle in one’s life is a footnote in the struggle of humanity…

A book that renders the story of the writer’s struggle,with herself, her family, the society in which she came of age, and a new society into which she was thrust transformed by events beyond her control or imagination. It is clear, Lea Ypi hasn’t been born to interpret the world, but to change it. An authentic biography illustrating the main constancy of life is change and to be the change you want to see is always a struggle.

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A real thing!

There is a lot of promise in the description of the book before you purchase it and more often than not it falls flat after an hour or two of diving into it. This one is different. It delivers what is promised and exceeds it. I'd love to have more books like this, describing messy yet beautiful reality instead of feeding smooth and polished wannabe experiences.

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1 person found this helpful

Great story. Good Narration. Bad impersonations

Great story about a lesser know part of 20th century history. Narrated well apart from the character impersonations which are awful.

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Albania's period of strict Socialism

The first part of Lea's childhood is told with vivid insights into how it was to live under repressive socialism during the 1980's. This part is very well read and it ties you to the book. The second part of the story is less intriguing and not so well read, but the Epilogue is important as it explains better Lea's current position and views on Socialism. An unusual autobiography that is well worth listening to.

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when university meant prison camp

Lea Ypi was 13 when Comrade Enver Hoxha the Stalinist communist leader of her country Albania died. She had been a keen child communist and accepted Hoxha as revered leader (she had even wanted his picture displayed in their home) and she couldn’t understand why her parents seemed to have different feelings. Lea Ypi now teaches Political Theory at the LSE and this memoir is on one level a child’s eye view of the disintegration of a country (and her family) and an adult inquiry into the nature of ‘freedom’.
There was a great deal that Ypi didn’t understand about her family and her country when she was a child, not least the mysterious importance attached to ‘biography’. During the Hoxha years she was impressed by all her family members who’d been to university and achieved great honours, only to find years later that her parents had been speaking in code and all those accounts of friends and family who had graduated so illustriously in fact had been in prison camps and prisons, survived (or not) dreadful punishments, been executed or committed suicide (the ultimate graduation). She came to understand her parents’ status as intellectuals only later, and how her highly connected Grandmother who spoke only French had suffered such cruel loss in Greece. When she saw pictures in her reading book in late childhood she saw pictures of shops where there were NO QUEUES (Albanian queues could last for days and your place was kept with a stone or a bag), and she experienced her first highly prized Coke can. After Hoxha the family suffered the political collapse of Albania with the failed efforts at reform: the lack of electricity, the rumbling civil unrest – and then the failure of the pyramid saving schemes which lost so many Albanians their life savings and Ypi’s mother joined the emigration and fled to Italy. There’s a huge amount more and the whole is a very special human testament which creates the adult and the child view.

As an audiobook it has a problem which isn’t the narrator’s fault as no doubt she was instructed to read this way. The problem lies with the accents. Ypi’s father didn’t speak English until well into late middle age, which frustrated him; her grandmother spoke only French; Ypi herself resented speaking French and not Albanian, but learned faultless English; others spoke Albanian (and probably other languages too) – language is a very important part of this history freighted with very great significance. The problem is for the narration – how do you read the dialogue? The decision here was to give them regional English accents – Grandmother is aristocratic English and others are rough London, northern or something else. I think this was a mistake. The text tells us what language these people spoke and reading the book you’d have no trouble, but forcing English regional and cultural accents on the listener raises all kinds of issues which are confusing and distracting. I think the only way would have been to read it as the narrator reads the rest – it’s only the dialogue which raises the difficulties. So it only gets a 3 for performance and a 4 overall. The content is definitely a five.

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2 people found this helpful

Brilliant thought provoking book.

Loved this book. Especially the epilogue. Might have been better read in an Albanian accent but it didn't take away from the book too much.

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An excellent book - well worth re-recording...

I really enjoyed Free, both as a tale of childhood in Albania, but also a commentary on Albania's trials under Communism and Capitalism. As several reviewers have already suggested, this audiobook would be much improved if Lea Ypi were to narrate it herself. The comedy English regional accents applied to different characters (seemingly at random) really aren't a good thing...

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Fantastic crash course in all things Albania.

Interesting, informative, surprising, moving and exquisitely read. I am in love with the writer and the narrator!

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1 person found this helpful