Launching a new series always carries a certain thrill, and Reading Around the World begins exactly where the alphabet tells us to start: with A for Albania. When I interviewed the Albanian Ambassador Adia Sakiqi, she spoke passionately about her country’s cultural identity and, almost in the same breath, recommended a book she felt captured the essence of Albania’s recent past. That book was Lea Ypi’s Free: Coming of Age at the End of History. It felt only right to make it the very first stop on this literary journey.
A memoir shaped by a collapsing world
Free is an autobiography in which Lea Ypi recounts her childhood and adolescence during one of the most turbulent periods in Albanian history: the fall of communism in the early 1990s. The book is structured in two parts – before and after the collapse – a division that mirrors the rupture in Ypi’s own life. What begins as a child’s attempt to make sense of a tightly controlled society becomes, almost overnight, a confrontation with truths that had been carefully hidden from her.
Laura Hackett of the Sunday Times described the memoir as “astonishing and deeply resonant… more fundamentally about humanity, and about the confusions and wonders of childhood.” I found myself agreeing with her assessment. Ypi’s voice is sharp, humorous, and disarmingly honest, and she manages to capture both the absurdity and the gravity of the world she grew up in.
The Coca-Cola can that says everything
One moment in the book struck me with particular force: the effect a single Coca-Cola can can have. In most parts of the world, an empty soda can is nothing more than trash. In communist Albania, it becomes a treasure. Ypi describes how her family displays it like a priceless artifact, a tiny piece of the West that had slipped through the cracks of the regime. Seen through a child’s eyes, the can becomes a symbol of everything she cannot yet name: freedom, possibility, and a hidden world beyond the borders she has been taught to accept.
This detail stayed with me long after I closed the book. It illustrates how scarcity reshapes meaning, how objects become symbols, and how children often understand more through emotion than through explanation. The longing projected onto that can is almost palpable.
The end of history – and the end of certainty
The chapter in which socialism collapses is one of the most powerful in the memoir. Ypi, still a child, suddenly learns that the world she thought she understood was built on silence and fear. Her family begins revealing stories they had never dared to share with her. Everything changes in a matter of days in December 1990. The adults around her scramble to adjust to a new reality, while she tries to reconcile the people she loves with the secrets they kept.
The “end of history”, as the era was called by Ypi, did not bring the clarity or liberation many expected. Instead, it brought chaos.
Freedom for Lea Ypi – but at what cost
After the fall of the regime, expectations soared. Freedom was supposed to mean happiness, prosperity, and opportunity. Instead, Albania faced economic collapse. Factories shut down, violent conflict erupted, and thousands fled the country in search of a better life. Many tried to reach Italy, only to be sent back. Lea Ypi begins to question what freedom actually means when the structures that support it are missing.
Her reflections feel painfully relevant, especially when viewed from a Western perspective. I grew up in a part of Germany that was never under socialist rule, and I was born after these events had already unfolded. At first, the book read like a dystopian novel to me. The idea of not being able to buy a Coke if you wanted one felt almost unreal. Yet as the story progressed, I found myself sympathising – and eventually identifying – with Ypi. Beneath the political upheaval, she is simply a girl trying to understand herself, her family, and her place in a rapidly changing world.
A memoir that travels far beyond Albania
Free has received significant recognition, including being named Sunday Times Memoir of the Year, winning the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, and earning several shortlistings. These accolades are well deserved. Ypi’s writing is intimate yet analytical, personal yet political, and always grounded in the emotional truth of growing up in a world that is falling apart and reforming at the same time.
Lea Ypi: A strong beginning for Reading Around the World
Choosing Free by Lea Ypi as the first book in this series feels fitting. It offers a window into a country often overlooked in European discourse, and it does so through the eyes of someone who lived through one of its most defining moments. It is a story about Albania, but also about childhood, ideology, and the complicated nature of freedom.
If this is what “A” has to offer, I cannot wait to see where the alphabet takes us next.
If you are curious to explore story of Lea Ypi, her reflections on freedom, or Albania’s recent history for yourself, you can find the book here (free shipping within Germany). Using this affiliate link supports the Reading Around the World series and helps me continue bringing these stories to Diplomacy2See.
