Second paragraph of third chapter:

Although both my parents were officially ‘intellectuals’ because they went to university, neither studied what they wanted to study. My father’s story was the more confusing of the two. He was gifted in the sciences and while still in secondary school had won Olympiads in maths, physics, chemistry and biology. He wanted to continue studying maths but was told by the Party that he had to join the real working class because of his ‘biography’. My family often mentioned that word, but I never understood it. It had such wide applications that you could not make out its significance in any particular context. If you asked my parents how they met and why they married, they would answer: ‘Biography.’ If my mother was preparing a file for work, she would be reminded: ‘Don’t forget to add a few lines about your biography.’ If I made a new friend in school, my parents would ask each other: ‘Do we know anything about their biography?’

Autobiography of an Albanian academic, writing about her childhood in totalitarian Albania and the eventual transition to democracy. I have been to Albania a few times, starting in 2004, and the Hoxha regime is now marketed as somewhat kitschy; this first person account reminds us of how all-enveloping the ideologically-driven police state was. I remember some very lefty acquaintances in the 1980s singing the praises of the motivation of the Albanian volunteers building railways for the workers’ paradise; now that we know the truth, it’s all pretty revolting.

Childhood is childhood wherever you are, of course, but the cycle of school and family, indoctrination and mild subversion, was specific to Eastern Europe and particularly odd in Albania. Lea Ypi grew up knowing that her great-grandfather had had the same name as a pre-Communist Prime Minister, but was taught to insist that it was just a coincidence; only after the end of the old regime did she learn that in fact Xhafer Ypi was her great-grandfather, and that this element of ‘biography’ had followed her father throughout his career.

Then change came at breakneck speed, and her parents became political activists, her father even serving a term as a somewhat detached MP for the Democratic Party. Her cosmopolitan grandmother, however, had always encouraged her to keep an eye on the rest of the world, and after the economic collapse of 1997, she left to study philosophy abroad.

This isn’t a travelogue around the physical geography of Albania, but it’s a great guide to the psychology of an entire country forced to survive on lies for forty years, and the aftermath, told through an intensely personal lens. Strongly recommended (and thanks to Michael Clarke for recommending it to me). You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2023 which is not by Ben Aaronovitch. Next on that pile is The Wren, The Wren, by Anne Enright.