''Free: Coming of Age at the End of History'' or ''Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History'' is a 2021 book by

Lea Ypi Lea Ypi (born 8 September 1979) is an Albanian academic and author. She is a professor of political theory at the London School of Economics. Background and early life Ypi was born in Tirana, the eldest child of Xhaferr Ypi and Vjollca Veli, ...

published by

Penguin Books Penguin Books Limited is a Germany, German-owned English publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers the Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the ...

. In the book, Ypi details her experience growing up before and after the

fall of communism The revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism, were a revolutionary wave of liberal democracy movements that resulted in the collapse of most Marxist–Leninist governments in the Eastern Bloc and other parts of the world. Th ...

Albania Albania ( ; or ), officially the Republic of Albania (), is a country in Southeast Europe. It is located in the Balkans, on the Adriatic Sea, Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea, and shares land borders with Montenegro to ...

Reception

''Free'' was shortlisted for the 2021

Baillie Gifford Prize The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, formerly the Samuel Johnson Prize, is an annual British book prize for the best non-fiction writing in the English language. It was founded in 1999 following the demise of the NCR Book Award. With its ...

and the 2021 Costa Book Award for

biography A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curri ...

. In January 2022,

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

serialised the book in their ''

Book of the Week ''Book of the Week'' is a long-running BBC Radio 4 series, first broadcast in 1998. It features daily readings from an abridged version of a selected book read over five or occasionally ten weekday episodes. Each episode is approximately 15 min ...

'' series. ''Free'' won the

Ondaatje Prize The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize is an annual literary award given by the Royal Society of Literature. The £10,000 award is for a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry that evokes the "spirit of a place", and is written by someo ...

and the Slightly Foxed First Biography Prize. 10,000 copies of the book were sold in November 2021. Ed O'Loughlin praised Ypi's use of

subtext In any communication, in any medium or format, "subtext" is the underlying or implicit meaning that, while not explicitly stated, is understood by an audience. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "an underlying and often distinct theme ...

in the work. Critics of the book have accused it of being communist apologia, an accusation that Ypi has denied.

References

External links

* 2021 non-fiction books Allen Lane (imprint) books {{Memoir-stub