Indignity

Beguiling and moving… a clever hybrid, happily exploiting all the many possibilities of telling a life story. In the process, not only is the life of an individual described and plotted with great success, but also a form of oblique history of 20th-century Albania is offered, illuminating all its perversities, absurdities and ruthlessness… Ypi has tried in her complex narrative to restore a sense of dignity to her grandmother’s rackety, alternately cursed and fortunate, history-buffeted life… She has triumphantly achieved her objective – William Boyd * Observer *Virtually unique in English… blending fact and fiction, Ypi sweeps the reader along * Economist *Lea Ypi goes deep into Europe’s forgotten past to explore who owns the story of a life and who gets to tell it. A gripping tale of secret police, fractured families and undying loyalties, this is also a remarkable reflection on how history is made and what happens to the people who get left behind – David RuncimanLea Ypi is one of those rare and precious thinkers who illuminate historical truth through the brilliant power of their storytelling. I read Indignity with the same awe I first read Middlemarch and Beloved. A masterpiece – Lyndsey StonebridgeA delicate and powerful reimagining of a life which dignifies both the subject of the book, Ypi’s grandmother, and its author. It is an act of watchful, questing, loving witness, through the turmoil of the fractured Balkans in the mid 20th century. In beautifully reimagined scenes, interspersed with original State Security Service reports in their baleful, banal official-ese, Ypi brings vividly to life human beings making hard decisions and living with the consequences. And she’s able to interrogate the kinds of truths we want from archives—and from life— some of which we’re unlikely to get. Most of all it is Ypi’s own fine and compassionate moral sense of the complexities of human beings that makes this a superb read – Anna FunderA captivating journey, of imagination and of longing, and a gentle uncovering of a deep buried history – Philippe Sands

Lea Ypi holds the Ralph Miliband Chair in Politics and Philosophy at the London School of Economics. Her first trade book, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History won the Ondaatje Prize and the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and the Costa Biography Award. It is translated into over thirty languages.