Free: Coming of Age at the End of History

Winner of the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize
Winner of the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Award
Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award • Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction • Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize

Named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker, Washington Post, Financial Times, Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Foreign Affairs, Public Books, and Sunday Times

In a memoir that is by turns “bitingly, if darkly, funny…and truly profound” (Max Strasser, New York Times), Lea Ypi reflects on “freedom” as she recounts living through the end Communism in the Balkans as a child.

“Beguiling…[A] primer on how to live when old verities turn to dust.” —Charles King, Washington Post