Talking Politics

David talks with Lea Ypi about her astonishing new memoir Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, which tells the story of her childhood in Stalinist Albania and what came after. It’s a tale of family secrets, political oppression and the promise of liberation - and a profound meditation on what it really means to be free. From Marxism to liberalism and back again, this is a conversation that brings political ideas to life. Lea Ypi is Professor of Political Theory at the LSE and Free has been shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford PrizeTalking Points: Albania was a socialist country that went through various alliances.By the time that Lea was born, it was largely isolated.The dominant narrative was that Albania was a country surrounded by empires, which stood on the moral high-ground.In other words, it was socialist and anti-imperialist but also fiercely nationalist. For Albania, the key year was not 1989 but 1990.Initially, dissidents were described as ‘hooligans.’In Decemb