When a photograph of her grandmother resurfaces online, Lea Ypi sets out to uncover the truth behind Leman’s life – a quest to fill in the blanks of a fractured past and restore a dignity the many folds of history nearly buried. In a journey that takes her from Salonica to the Albanian Secret Police Archives via Italy, Lea ultimately finds refuge in the power of storytelling, piecing together snippets of her grandmother’s life in a Europe in the midst of great political upheaval.
The questions she comes across in her journey are universal and they uncover something about the times we live in today. How can one reverse historical injustices to render the people closest to us as fully fledged individuals? And with what moral authority do we judge the past?
Indignity is an imaginative investigation into dignity and historical injustice through the story of a family from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the dawn of Communism in the Balkans.
About Lea Ypi
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.
