Albanian author Lea Ypi named winner of £10,000 RSL Ondaatje Prize

Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Speaking after receiving the prize, Ypi said she hoped the book would “make people more sensitive to the realities” of a country like Albania and provoke interest in its history. “I hope that it will make people have an interest in the history of this country, which is also a history of universal significance… and make people more sensitive to the realities that should be paid attention to, regardless of whether there is a recognised crisis in a place or not.” Ypi fended off competition from five other authors – Sathnam Sanghera, AK Blakemore, Cal Flyn, Yousif M Qasmiyeh, and Elif Shafak. The competition’s judges, Sandeep Parmar, Patrice Lawrence and Philippe Sands, said Ypi was a “master at the juxtaposition grand and personal narratives.” “Reading and re-reading 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,” they said. “Ypi’s both darkly humorous and deeply serious work made us reflect forcefully on the need for truthfulness about the stories we are told and how we negotiate our own lives within them.” The author is also professor of political theory at the London School of Economics, and political science and adjunct professor in philosophy at the Australian National University.