Lea Ypi's “Free” is a story that was waiting to be told, a riveting memoir of a childhood abruptly severed into “before” and “after.” Thirty years on, reconciling those shattered fragments remains elusively hard for many of us who came of age in the Albania of the 1990s.

“Free” is an equally depressing and humorous account of a jarring transition from a failed pseudo-socialist utopian experiment to a pseudo-capitalist society. It is a stark chronicle of a rupture in our collective identity, marked by fear, confusion, and hesitation. A rupture we were ill-equipped to process objectively as we anxiously strove to chart a new path, far away from an uncomfortable past, seemingly devoid of any useful points of reference.

“Free” is a compelling invitation to revisit a collective trauma most of us have archived, swept under the rug, dismissed, but rarely faced or discussed with an open mind. Yet, above all is a thought-provoking meditation on freedom, values, integrity, morality, and identity. It is a timely, honest, and critical reflection masterfully written in an absorbing narrative… because “when we don’t know how to think about the future, we must turn to the past.”