Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year

Lea Ypi’s Free: Coming of age at the end of history (Allen Lane) is an enthralling account of the end of communism in Albania drawn from her childhood memories, a classic in the making. While pondering the nature of freedom, she deftly alternates horror and hilarity: “expulsion from university” is code for execution in a prison camp; families fight over who owns an empty Coca-Cola can, proudly displayed at home. Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s The Passenger (Pushkin), recently rediscovered, brilliantly conveys the sense of being trapped as a Jew in Nazi Germany. It is both a terrible warning of what was to come and an incisive description of how easily people slip into conformity with a dominant, dangerous and uncompromising ideology. Among history books, Christoph Baumer’s sumptuously illustrated History of the Caucasus: At the crossroads of empires (IB Tauris) unravels the complex early history of a neglected corner of Eurasia.