An astonishing, personal, historical and political portrait of the Albanian Stalinism downfall and the troubled arrival of democracy.

As an eleven years old, Lea Ypi witnessed the end of the world. Or at least of a world. In 1990, the communist regime of Albania, the last bulwakr of Stalinism in Europe, crumbled.

Indoctrinated since school, she couldn't understand why statues of Stalin and Hoxha were taken down, but secrets and silence followed those monuments: the mechanisms of mass control, the secret police assassinations... everything was out in the light.

The change of political system brought democract, but it wasn't an easy path. The liberalist transition meant the redoing of the economy, mass unemployment, a migration wave towards Italy and the country's bankruptcy.

This period brought unexpected surprises to Lea's family environment: she discovered the 'universities' her parents had 'studied' at and why they spoke in secretive whispers and codes; she learned about an ancestor who had been part of the government preivous to communism and how her family was expropiated.

A mix of memories, historical essay and social.political reflection, adding a superb and literary prose with hints of absurd humour —unavoidable given the space and time—, astonishingly lucid: it reflects a moment of tumultuous political transformation from personal experience, whitout any guarantee to lead towards justice or freedom.