Overview

The acclaimed author of Free returns with an imaginative investigation into dignity and historical injustice through the story of a family When Lea Ypi discovers a photo of her grandmother, Leman, honeymooning in the Alps in 1941 posted by a stranger on social media, she is faced with unsettling questions. Growing up, she was told records of her grandmother's youth were destroyed in the early days of communism in Albania. But there Leman was with her husband, Asllan Ypi- glamorous newlyweds while World War II raged. What follows is a thrilling reimagining of the past, as we are transported to the vanished world of Ottoman aristocracy, the making of modern Greece and Albania, a global financial crisis, the horrors of war and the dawn of communism in the Balkans. While investigating the truth about her family, Ypi grapples with uncertainty. Who is the real Leman Ypi? What made her move to Tirana as a young woman and marry a socialist who sympathized with the Popular Front while his father led a collaborationist government? And why was she smiling in the winter of 1941? By turns epic and intimate, profound and gripping, Indignity explores what it means to survive in an age of extremes. It reveals the fragility of truth, both personal and political, and the cost of decisions made against the tide of history. Through secret police reports of communist spies, court depositions, and Ypi's memories of her grandmother, we move between present and past, archive and imagination, fact and fiction. Ultimately, she asks, what do we really know about the people closest to us? And with what moral authority do we judge the acts of previous generations?

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9780241661925

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Reviews

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 * 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 * Troubled by a photo of her grandmother, Lea Ypi delves into archive and memory to uncover the truth... A richly reimagined retelling of a life... history brought to life through novelistic style. Suspenseful... thought-provoking * Guardian * 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 * 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 * 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 Runciman Lea 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 Stonebridge Indignity dissects the concept of freedom, exploring the fragility of truths both personal and political. The book, a hybrid of fiction and non-fiction, uses the imaginary to illustrate how dignity and indignity play out in traumatic, historic circumstances... not only a reimagined retelling of her grandmother’s life, but also a meditation on how history is curated, contested and lived * AnOther * A 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 Funder

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 Runciman A captivating journey, of imagination and of longing, and a gentle uncovering of a deep buried history -- Philippe Sands A 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 Funder

A captivating journey, of imagination and of longing, and a gentle uncovering of a deep buried history that goes to the very heart of identity with brilliant storytelling -- Philippe Sands

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 Runciman Lea 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 Stonebridge A 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 Funder A captivating journey, of imagination and of longing, and a gentle uncovering of a deep buried history -- Philippe Sands

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 Runciman Lea 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 Stonebridge A 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 Funder A captivating journey, of imagination and of longing, and a gentle uncovering of a deep buried history -- Philippe Sands

Author Information

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.

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