Free: Coming of Age at the End of History

“Free does all the things you could ask of a family memoir plus at least one hundred more. You’ve got the finely drawn family portraits, the novelistic reimaginings of dialogue, the master antagonisms of history—and History with a capital ‘H’.” Read more...

The best books on Family History

Thea Lenarduzzi, Journalist

“It’s mostly a memoir about growing up in Albania. But that doesn’t adequately describe the book, because, as its title suggests, it’s really about different conceptions of freedom, told through experience and reflection on that experience. It’s very different from my other choices here. It’s a really fascinating and wonderful book, and beautifully written too. You won’t regret buying this one, for sure.” Read more...

The Best Philosophy Books of 2021

Nigel Warburton, Philosopher

“Lea Ypi writes about being a very precocious, talented little girl who is determined to be the best Stalinist pioneer that you could possibly have: she does more cleaning, she collects more rubbish. She’s the perfect little communist. She thinks that her parents are a huge embarrassment. They’re backsliders, they’ve not got with the program, something has gone wrong. There’s also this other embarrassment, which is that the prime minister who handed over Albania to the Italian fascist government during the war happens to have the same surname as her. She has to keep on telling her classmates, ‘No, it’s nothing to do with us, it’s another Ypi’.” Read more...

The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist

Kathryn Hughes, Literary Scholar