Academic Lea Ypi’s “darkly humorous and deeply serious” memoir, Free, which speaks “so resonantly to our lived moment”, has won the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje prize.
The award is given for books that “best evoke the spirit of a place”. Free chronicles Ypi’s coming-of-age in Albania at a time when it was one of the last Stalinist outposts in Europe. In December 1990, statues of Stalin and Hoxha were toppled, and life changed overnight for people, who were now able to vote freely, wear what they liked and worship as they wished.
But the change also saw jobs disappear and predatory pyramid schemes lead to the country being bankrupted, resulting in violent conflict. As her own family’s secrets were revealed, Ypi found herself questioning what freedom really meant.
Chairing the judging panel was poet Sandeep Parmar, joined by YA author Patrice Lawrence and writer and lawyer Philippe Sands.
They said of Free: “Reading and rereading Lea Ypi’s Free we felt very strongly that the book’s central concerns – politics, personal history, the very meaning of freedom – spoke so resonantly to our lived moment.”
The judges described Ypi as “a master” of juxtaposing grand and personal narratives. They also praised the way her “darkly humorous and deeply serious work” made them “reflect forcefully on the need for truthfulness about the stories we are told and how we negotiate our own lives within them.”
Ypi, who has been awarded £10,000 in prize money, is a professor of political theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science and adjunct professor in philosophy at the Australian National University. She was announced as the winner by RSL president emeritus Colin Thubron on behalf of the prize founder and funder, Sir Christopher Ondaatje, at an event at Two Temple Place in London.
Free was chosen as the winner from a shortlist of six books. The others in contention were The Manningtree Witches by AK Blakemore, Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn, Writing the Camp by Yousif M Qasmiyeh, Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera and The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak.
The prize was won in 2021 by Ruth Gilligan’s thriller The Butchers. Previous winners include former MP Alan Johnson for his memoir This Boy, and Guardian journalist Aida Edemariam for her account of her grandmother’s life story, The Wife’s Tale.
