Lea Ypi rose to fame with the publication of her coming-of-age memoir, titled Free, in 2021. Since then, the book has been translated into more than 30 languages and continues to serve as a must-read book on Albania and the wider Balkans (I am told on a good authority that the book is the favourite read of development consultants and academics on the region).
Lea Ypi’s second book, Indignity, lifts one of Free’s chief characters — her paternal grandmother, Leman Ypi — and reconstructs Leman’s life through a combination of archival research, memory and imagination.
Lea is jolted into this life reconstruction work when a picture of her beaming grandmother on her honeymoon, in 1941 in Cortina in the Italian Alps, is posted on social media. The picture, which Lea had not seen before, attracts internet trolls, with damaging allegations of her grandmother being a fascist collaborator.
This sets Lea on a hunt to discover the real truth about her deceased grandmother and restore her to the pedestal of dignity from the m
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