Indignity
A Life Reimagined
Published on 4. September 2025
Book
Hardback
368 pages
978-0-241-66192-5 (ISBN)
Description
*Longlisted for the 2026 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction*
Named a Book of the Year by Financial Times, Sunday Times, Prospect, TLS, Washington Post, NPR
'Stunningly multilayered... explores what happens when philosophies meet history, when decisions have to be made at the point of a gun' Prospect
From the acclaimed author of Free comes an imaginative investigation into historical injustice, dignity and truth -- told through the story of a family from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the dawn of Communism in the Balkans
'There is something about the human spirit, she would say, that withstands all attempts at offence, injury or humiliation ... we call it dignity'
When Lea Ypi discovers a photo of her grandmother, Leman, honeymooning in the Alps in 1941 posted by a stranger on social media, she is faced with unsettling questions. Growing up, she was told records of her grandmother's youth were destroyed in the early days of communism in Albania. But there Leman was with her husband, Asllan Ypi: glamorous newlyweds while World War II raged.
What follows is a thrilling reimagining of the past, as we are transported to the vanished world of Ottoman aristocracy, the making of modern Greece and Albania, a global financial crisis, the horrors of war and the dawn of communism in the Balkans. While investigating the truth about her family, Ypi grapples with uncertainty. Who is the real Leman Ypi? What made her move to Tirana as a young woman and marry a socialist who sympathized with the Popular Front while his father led a collaborationist government? And why was she smiling in the winter of 1941?
By turns epic and intimate, profound and gripping, Indignity explores what it means to survive in an age of extremes. It reveals the fragility of truth, both personal and political, and the cost of decisions made against the tide of history. Through secret police reports of communist spies, court depositions, and Ypi's memories of her grandmother, we move between present and past, archive and imagination, fact and fiction. Ultimately, she asks, what do we really know about the people closest to us? And with what moral authority do we judge the acts of previous generations?
Named a Book of the Year by Financial Times, Sunday Times, Prospect, TLS, Washington Post, NPR
'Stunningly multilayered... explores what happens when philosophies meet history, when decisions have to be made at the point of a gun' Prospect
From the acclaimed author of Free comes an imaginative investigation into historical injustice, dignity and truth -- told through the story of a family from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the dawn of Communism in the Balkans
'There is something about the human spirit, she would say, that withstands all attempts at offence, injury or humiliation ... we call it dignity'
When Lea Ypi discovers a photo of her grandmother, Leman, honeymooning in the Alps in 1941 posted by a stranger on social media, she is faced with unsettling questions. Growing up, she was told records of her grandmother's youth were destroyed in the early days of communism in Albania. But there Leman was with her husband, Asllan Ypi: glamorous newlyweds while World War II raged.
What follows is a thrilling reimagining of the past, as we are transported to the vanished world of Ottoman aristocracy, the making of modern Greece and Albania, a global financial crisis, the horrors of war and the dawn of communism in the Balkans. While investigating the truth about her family, Ypi grapples with uncertainty. Who is the real Leman Ypi? What made her move to Tirana as a young woman and marry a socialist who sympathized with the Popular Front while his father led a collaborationist government? And why was she smiling in the winter of 1941?
By turns epic and intimate, profound and gripping, Indignity explores what it means to survive in an age of extremes. It reveals the fragility of truth, both personal and political, and the cost of decisions made against the tide of history. Through secret police reports of communist spies, court depositions, and Ypi's memories of her grandmother, we move between present and past, archive and imagination, fact and fiction. Ultimately, she asks, what do we really know about the people closest to us? And with what moral authority do we judge the acts of previous generations?
Reviews / Votes
A magical literary feat and one of the most touching books I've read this year... It reminded me variously of Kafka and Bulgakov at his most heartbroken -- Stuart Jeffries * Spectator * Beguiling and moving... a clever hybrid, happily exploiting all the many possibilities of telling a life story. In the process, not only is the life of an individual described and plotted with great success, but also a form of oblique history of 20th-century Albania is offered, illuminating all its perversities, absurdities and ruthlessness... Ypi has tried in her complex narrative to restore a sense of dignity to her grandmother's rackety, alternately cursed and fortunate, history-buffeted life... She has triumphantly achieved her objective -- William Boyd * Observer * Gripping... evoking the work of Elena Ferrante in its invocations of fevered girlhood, marriage, friendship and intellectual debate in webs of family, class struggle and politics... Both particular and universal, historical and timely... it will stay with me -- Elizabeth Graver * The New York Times * A richly reimagined retelling of a life... history brought to life through novelistic style. Suspenseful... thought-provoking -- Sami Kent * Guardian * Stunningly multilayered, spans the decline of the Ottoman empire to the rise of fascism in Europe to the Soviet era... On the surface, there is the drama and emotion of Leman's story. Underneath, there is philosophy, literature, history and more... Indignity explores what happens when philosophies meet history, when decisions have to be made at the point of a gun -- Peter Hoskin * Prospect * Remarkable and ambitious. . . Leman led a life so rich in incident that only a novel could do justice to its complexities, and a novel, of sorts, is exactly what Ypi has written -- Becca Rothfeld * Washington Post * A rich account of lives lived inside the gates of history... Part memoir and part historical novel - or, if you will, part imaginative reconstruction of a secret family history -- Kevin Power * Irish Times * In Indignity Ypi tells a complicated story engagingly, and fills in many of the gaps left open in Free... A triumph -- Jonathan Ree * Literary Review * Virtually unique in English... blending fact and fiction, Ypi sweeps the reader along * Economist * How women struggle to survive in dangerous times is one of the themes of Ypi's bold new book... Although she has a novelist's instinct for dramatic incident and psychological nuance, Indignity is very much a philosopher's book as well, since the different characters embody different attitudes - Kantian, Stoic, Nietzschean, more cynical and pragmatic - to dignity and morality -- Matthew Reiz * Times Higher Education *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 221 mm
Width: 143 mm
Thickness: 37 mm
Weight
468 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-66192-5 (9780241661925)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Person
Lea Ypi holds the Ralph Miliband Chair in Politics and Philosophy at the London School of Economics. Her first trade book, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History won the Ondaatje Prize and the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and the Costa Biography Award. It is translated into over thirty languages.