Lea Ypi, a philosopher at the London School of Economics, recounts her childhood in Albania during the collapse of communism in this memoir that resists easy categories. Ypi grew up believing in socialism, inheriting from her family both genuine commitment to equality and careful silence about relatives who had been persecuted by the regime. When the statue of Stalin in her hometown square was beheaded in 1990, her child's faith collided with uncomfortable truths about the system she had absorbed and the family history that had been hidden from her. The book traces Albania's chaotic transition to capitalism: the violence, the pyramid schemes that bankrupted the country, the mass emigration that emptied villages. Ypi examines how 'freedom' was promised by the West yet arrived as shock therapy and exploitation. She reflects on her own journey from true believer to refugee to professor of political theory, considering what was lost as well as gained in the transition. The memoir raises questions about political education, family secrets, and the relationship between personal experience and ideological conviction. Ypi writes with a philosopher's precision and a novelist's eye for telling detail, creating a work that illuminates a particular historical moment while exploring universal questions about belief, disillusionment, and the complicated meanings of freedom.