《Free》简介：

Shortlisted for the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

A reflection on "freedom" in a dramatic, beautifully written memoir of the end of Communism in the Balkans.

For precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi, Albania’s Soviet-style socialism held the promise of a preordained future, a guarantee of security among enthusiastic comrades. That is, until she found herself clinging to a stone statue of Joseph Stalin, newly beheaded by student protests.

Communism had failed to deliver the promised utopia. One’s “biography”―class status and other associations long in the past―put strict boundaries around one’s individual future. When Lea’s parents spoke of relatives going to “university” or “graduating,” they were speaking of grave secrets Lea struggled to unveil. And when the early ’90s saw Albania and other Balkan countries exuberantly begin a transition to the “free market,” Western ideals of freedom delivered chaos: a dystopia of pyramid schemes, organized crime, and sex trafficking.

With her elegant, intellectual, French-speaking grandmother; her radical-chic father; and her staunchly anti-socialist, Thatcherite mother to guide her through these disorienting times, Lea had a political education of the most colorful sort―here recounted with outstanding literary talent. Now one of the world’s most dynamic young political thinkers and a prominent leftist voice in the United Kingdom, Lea offers a fresh and invigorating perspective on the relation between the personal and the political, between values and identity, posing urgent questions about the cost of freedom.

《Free》摘录：

不論是我講述阿爾巴尼亞社會主義下的親身經歷，還是拿我們的社會主義和其他社會主義國家相比，在我這群朋友眼中頂多是一個還在學習融入新社會的外國人的尷尬發言，只能多多包容。蘇聯、中國、東德、南斯拉夫、越南、古巴，這些國家也不是社會主義，而是這場歷史鬥爭中理當落敗的輸家，真正配得上社會主義頭銜的國家還沒有參戰。我朋友的社會主義清楚明白，仍在未來；我的社會主義混亂血腥，已成過去。 然而，他們所追尋的未來和社會主義曾經體現的未來，靈感都來自同樣的書、同樣的社會批判與同樣的歷史人物。但令我詫異的是，他們只當這是不幸的巧合。我這邊發生的錯誤都可以用領導人的殘暴不仁或制度特別落後來解釋，在他們看來沒什麼好學習的。他們不可能犯相同錯誤，因此沒有理由思考我們做到了什麼，又為何毀於一旦。他們的社會主義是自由與正義的勝利，我的社會主義是自由與正義的失敗。他們的社會主義會在正確的人、正確的動機和正確的條件下實現，理論與實踐正確結合；我的社會主義只有一件事可做，那就是忘了它。 但我不想忘記，我不是懷古或念舊，也不是想美化自己的童年，更不是因為小時候學到的概念根深蒂固，所以甩不掉。如果說我家和我母國的歷史能讓我學到什麼教訓，那就是人類從來不是在自己所選擇的條件下創造歷史。批評「你這個不是真東西」很容易，不論社會主義、自由主義或任何複雜的理念與現實混合體都是如此。這種說法可以讓我們擺脫責任，不再是以偉大理念之名造成的道德悲劇的共謀，也不必反省、道歉和學習。