Indignity

A magical literary feat and one of the most touching books I’ve read this year… It reminded me variously of Kafka and Bulgakov at his most heartbroken – Stuart Jeffries * Spectator *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 *Gripping... evoking the work of Elena Ferrante in its invocations of fevered girlhood, marriage, friendship and intellectual debate in webs of family, class struggle and politics… Both particular and universal, historical and timely… it will stay with me – Elizabeth Graver * The New York Times *A richly reimagined retelling of a life… history brought to life through novelistic style. Suspenseful… thought-provoking – Sami Kent * Guardian *Stunningly multilayered, spans the decline of the Ottoman empire to the rise of fascism in Europe to the Soviet era… On the surface, there is the drama and emotion of Leman’s story. Underneath, there is philosophy, literature, history and more… Indignity explores what happens when philosophies meet history, when decisions have to be made at the point of a gun – Peter Hoskin * Prospect *Remarkable and ambitious… Leman led a life so rich in incident that only a novel could do justice to its complexities, and a novel, of sorts, is exactly what Ypi has written – Becca Rothfeld * Washington Post *A rich account of lives lived inside the gates of history… Part memoir and part historical novel – or, if you will, part imaginative reconstruction of a secret family history – Kevin Power * Irish Times *In Indignity Ypi tells a complicated story engagingly, and fills in many of the gaps left open in Free… A triumph – Jonathan Ree * Literary Review *Virtually unique in English… blending fact and fiction, Ypi sweeps the reader along * Economist *How women struggle to survive in dangerous times is one of the themes of Ypi’s bold new book… Although she has a novelist’s instinct for dramatic incident and psychological nuance, Indignity is very much a philosopher’s book as well, since the different characters embody different attitudes – Kantian, Stoic, Nietzschean, more cynical and pragmatic – to dignity and morality – Matthew Reiz * Times Higher Education *

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.