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"Free" is a memoir, novel, treatise not to be missed. Thoroughly enjoyable, this reads as an atmospheric, well-observed, wry memoir of the author's childhood in Albania, a country where the Communist paradigm had an extreme implementation and whose collapse, when the first-person narrator is in her early teens, questioned her whole past and informed her future life in ways which no-one can find uninteresting. But this text is far more than just a personal memoir. What makes it truly intriguing is how the author, a professor of political theory at the London School of Economics uses her story and that of her family and the world around her to explore political concepts and positions in a "practical" manner... the situations are in turn surrealist, funny, poignant, sad, hopeful and hopeless... I was totally hooked. Precisely because of its exemplary aims and the clever discussion of issues, I want to read it again. "She [her grandmother] liked to repeat the bit of Robespierre's speech that said that the secret of freedom is in educating people, while the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant."

Deeply thought-provoking, I have enjoyed the humour, the dissecting of issues, the look at family relationships and power games tremendously. An intelligent exploration of contemporary politics and ideas not in dry theoretical terms but in everyday life and lives.

With many thanks to the publishers via NetGalley for allowing me to read this excellent memoir and political treatise to boot.