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A Child and a Country at the End of History
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Narrated by:
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Rachel Babbage
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Lea Ypi
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By:
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Lea Ypi
About this listen
Longlisted for the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
A reflection on "freedom" in a dramatic, beautifully written memoir of the end of Communism in the Balkans.
Lea Ypi grew up in the last Stalinist country in Europe: Albania, a place of queuing and scarcity, of political executions and secret police. While family members disappeared to what she was told were "universities" from which few "graduated," she swore loyalty to the Party. In her eyes, people were equal, neighbors helped each other, and children were expected to build a better world.
Then the statues of Stalin and Hoxha were toppled. Almost overnight, people could vote and worship freely, and invest in hopes of striking it rich. But factories shut, jobs disappeared, and thousands fled to Italy, only to be sent back. Pyramid schemes bankrupted the country, leading to violence. One generation's dreams became another's disillusionment. As her own family's secrets were revealed, Ypi found herself questioning what "freedom" really means. With acute insight and wit, Ypi traces the perils of ideology, and what people need to flourish.
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So good
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Insightful
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Great read!
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Great Story, Great Narration
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Captivating memoir & I learned a lot
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It is a good overview of how the society works when finding its way through change and hope
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Spectacular!
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Beyond the larger-scale politics, the book covers Lea Ypi's family life: a family frequently engaging in small-scale political debates about the changing political landscape. She learns that she came from a family who's properties were expropriated during the revolution and the resentment of her mother lingered throughout her life and would become a platform for which her mother would launch a political campaign in the emerging centre-right party post-1992. Meanwhile on the other side of the family, her father at one point truly believed in the possibilities of revolutionary warfare to change societies and thus lived in (somewhat) quiet disagreement with his wife's politics.
The book is a fantastically in-depth look into political discourse as a whole, from the wide array of examples shown of these political ideas in practice: from the transition of communism to liberalism, and then into tragic civil war. Highly reccommend this book.
great as both a story and a time capsule
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A beautiful book
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Required reading
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