Indignidad : Una vida recreada

Convinced that all of her grandmother's early documents had been destroyed with the arrival of communism in Albania, Lea Ypi is astonished to discover that an old photograph of Leman Ypi, taken on her honeymoon in Cortina d'Ampezzo (in the Alps) in the winter of 1941, has gone viral after being posted on social media by an unknown person. Indeed, there is a smiling Leman with her husband, Asllan Ypi, newlyweds and charming, while World War II rages across Europe. The image unleashes a torrent of accusations about the couple's past. Stunned by the criticism that labels Leman a "communist spy" or "fascist collaborator," the author returns to her native Tirana to delve into the archives of the secret services, determined to uncover the truth and rescue her grandmother's memory. What follows is a thrilling exercise in reinterpreting the family's past, an extraordinary journey that transports us to the fading of the Ottoman aristocracy, the creation of modern Greece and Albania, a global financial crisis, the horrors of war, and the dawn of communism in the Balkans. Born in Thessaloniki in 1918, Leman's life is a complex tapestry of identities and loyalties that her granddaughter will attempt to piece together through secret police reports, court statements, and her own memories of her grandmother.