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, Albanias 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. Ones biographyclass status and other associations long in the pastput strict boundaries around ones individual future. When Leas 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 sorthere recounted with outstanding literary talent. Now one of the worlds 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.