'Free': Chronicle of a childhood in Albania during the fall of communism

PERSPECTIVE © FRANCE 24

Growing up in Albania, our guest had a childhood of two halves. One was lived in plain sight, since she was brought up at school to believe and love the communist doctrine of Albania's Enver Hoxha and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The other half was hidden, as she slowly discovered that not everyone loved Uncle Enver, and that even in her own family, not everyone was a believer. Lea Ypi is now a highly respected academic at the London School of Economics. Her new book "Free", which has just been translated into French as "Enfin Libre", tells the story of her childhood as she slowly understood, and later escaped, the repression that dominated her youngest years. She joined us for Perspective.