Publisher's Synopsis
When she was eleven years old, Lea Ypi witnessed the end of the world. At least from the end of a world. In 1990, the communist regime in Albania, the last bastion of Stalinism in Europe, collapsed. She, indoctrinated at school, did not understand why the statues of Stalin and Hoxha were being torn down, but with the monuments, secrets, and silences also fell: the population control mechanisms were revealed, the murders of the secret police... The change in the political system gave way to democracy, but not everything was rosy. The transition towards liberalism meant the restructuring of the economy, the massive loss of jobs, the wave of migration to Italy, corruption, and the bankruptcy of the country... A mixture of memories, historical essay, and sociopolitical reflection, this book reflects, from the personal experience, a convulsive moment of political transformation that did not necessarily lead to justice and freedom.
