Time to Pick Up August's Book from Albania!

The vote was so incredibly close! But before we get to that we’d like to share a comment submitted with the vote which made our week: “This was the best compilation for voting yet! How can anyone choose?!?!”

We’re thrilled you appreciated the list this month especially since it was such a hard one to put together.

We also wanted to highlight a book that didn’t work for a club read since a good portion occurs in the US, but it seems like a fascinating book. It focus on an Albanian tradition we hadn’t heard about before—if there are no male heirs, a woman can "choose" to become a man & enjoy the associated freedoms as long as she swears herself to virginity for life. “

“Dones’s deft and lively novel finds its sweet spot in a handful of dualities . . . Dones writes in a clean and breezy style, raising sly questions about culture, art, and, especially, gender. Her novel is provocative without being confrontational.” —Publishers Weekly

“Fascinating reading. The word pictures of people and of those repressive climates; dictatorship, rural isolation and patriarchy; that condition them are set out in very compelling prose. If you have never been to rural Albania, reading this novel will transport you there and bring you back again safely. It would be well worth the journey.” —Akanos

BUT WHAT BOOK ARE WE READING for the club?

Note: We’re thrilled we found an audio version available as well under a different link!

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

An astonishing and deeply resonant memoir that is by turns "bitingly, if darkly, funny…and truly profound" (NY Times), Lea Ypi writes about growing up in the last days of the last Stalinist outpost of the 20th century.

Family and nation formed a reliable bedrock of security for precocious 11-year-old Lea. She was a Young Pioneer, helping to lead her country toward the future of perfect freedom promised by the leaders of her country, the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania. Then, almost overnight, the Berlin Wall fell and the pillars of her society toppled. The local statue of Stalin, whom she had believed to be a kindly leader who loved children, was beheaded by student protestors.

Uncomfortable truths about her family’s background emerged. Lea learned that when her parents had spoken in whispers of friends going to “university” or relatives “dropping out,” they meant something much more sinister. As she learned the truth about her family’s past, her best friend fled the country. Together with neighboring post-Communist states, Albania began a messy transition to join the “free markets” of the Western world: a dystopia of pyramid schemes, organized crime, and sex trafficking. Her father, despite his radical left-wing convictions, was forced to fire workers; her mother became a conservative politician on the model of Margaret Thatcher. Lea’s typical teen concerns about relationships and the future were shot through with the existential: the nation was engulfed in civil war.

Ypi’s outstanding literary gifts enable her to weave together this colorful, tumultuous coming-of-age story in a time of social upheaval with thoughtful, fresh, and invigorating perspective on the relation between the personal and the political.

"Riveting. . .A wonderfully funny and poignant portrait of a small nation in a state of collapse. . . gloriously readable. . .One of the nonfiction titles of the year, it is destined for literary accolades and popular success.” ―Observer

"Utterly engrossing . . . Ypi's memoir is brilliantly observed, politically nuanced and—best of all—funny." ―Guardian

"Ypi is a beautiful writer and a serious political thinker, and in just a couple hundred readable pages, she takes turns between being bitingly, if darkly, funny (she skewers Stalinism and the World Bank with equal deadpan) and truly profound...Free is meant to inspire." ―NY Times Book Review

“I was entranced from beginning to end." ―Sunday Times

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org

Happy reading! (If you want to read & discuss the winning book together, join our online book club on Facebook.)