Lea Ypi is an Albanian native British author and Professor in Political Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science and an Honorary Professor in Philosophy at the Australian National University. She has degrees in Philosophy and in Literature from the University of Rome La Sapienza, a PhD from the European University Institute and was a Post-Doctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University. She is the author of Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency, The Meaning of Partisanship (with Jonathan White), and The Architectonic of Reason, all published by Oxford University Press. Her latest book, a philosophical memoir entitled Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, published by Penguin Press in the UK and W.W. Norton & Company in North America, won the 2022 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Slightly Foxed First Biography Prize and is being translated in thirty languages. Her academic work has been recognized with the British Academy Prize for Excellence in Political Science and the Leverhulme Prize for Outstanding Research Achievement. She coedits the journal Political Philosophy and occasionally writes for The Guardian and Financial Times.
In this insightful interview, Lea Ypi discusses the natural transition from academic to literary writing, emphasizing the different audiences and research processes involved. She reflects on the importance of sincerity in writing and the need for solitude to foster creativity. Ypi elaborates on her methodological approach influenced by analytical philosophy, which advocates for clear and accessible language. She highlights the challenges faced in keeping the biographical elements of Albania in her book despite market concerns and the crucial role of editors in shaping her work. The non native English writers will find this part very interesting. Ypi advises young writers to be true to themselves rather than catering to market demands, stressing the significance of authenticity and self-expression. Ypi also shares her writing process, the balance between her academic and literary endeavors, and the influence of her Albanian background on her philosophical beliefs. She concludes with thoughts on her success, the reactions to her work, and her upcoming projects, which continue to explore philosophical themes through personal and historical narratives.
This interview was first featured in Albanian in “Revista Letrare” in the Spring 2022 issue, following the publication of “Free” and its international success in many languages.
Interviewed by Dritan Kiçi, February 2022
Interviewer: Welcome to “Revista Letrare,” Lea! I’m thrilled that an Albanian author is being praised not just with good words, but very good words by those who usually write about big books—which means your book is also a big book—and this praise comes from almost all Western media, including “The Guardian” and so on. To avoid prolonging this introduction, I’ll say in advance that I won’t delve into the book’s details; readers should get it in their hands in Albanian, English, or other languages. In this interview, I want to focus more on Lea as an author and her writing process. This, I believe, is more important for our readers.
So: you have many previous academic publications that can be found at “Oxford Press,” a university publishing house. “Free” is different: it’s almost an epistolary mix of autobiography and literary creation, considering you’ve used your diaries. In short: no one knows where the autobiography ends and the fiction begins, and I don’t want to ask you what percentage is fiction and what is autobiography. So the question comes naturally: how does the transition from academic to literary writing happen; how did it happen for you?
Lea Ypi: Umm… Actually, it’s not a transition that I can conceptualize very clearly; it’s been a natural transition. I started the book as a work written for a general audience. Academic books usually have an audience that refers to specific literature. All my books so far have been academic, starting with a specific debate. For example, in my first book, it was the debate around global justice(Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency); in the second, the debate about the concept of political parties(The Meaning of Partisanship). It takes into account a development in a specific field and the contributions of some authors, and the academic author in this case tries to develop the literature further by giving his approach and critique of the existing literature. Whereas a book for a general audience doesn’t start by taking academic literature for granted, so it has a much more open research process. For me, the transition from academic to autobiographical literary writing came as a desire to write a book for the general public, which, unlike the academic one, is not interested in the issue. So I think this is the main difference between these two groups of readers. The academic audience has a preliminary interest in the issue because they want to know where the literature stands today, for example, regarding human rights or global justice, etc. Meanwhile, for the general public, anyone who walks into a bookstore can pick up this book if they are attracted to the topic, even without having a research interest in it. I started at the request of the publishing house “Penguin Press” to write a book with a philosophical basis and about my academic studies and contributions, but not only for academics or PhD students. This invitation came after my contributions to several newspapers, especially in “The Guardian,” where I had a regular column. The publishing house approached and expressed interest in me writing a book in the tone of those writings but for a broader audience on whatever I thought was an interesting concept.
I had been dealing with the theme of freedom in my studies for a long time, so I thought this would be a good starting point. Since it would be for the general public, I didn’t want to write it as an abstract philosophical study but to have examples and take on different colors from academic publications, which are usually dry and with the courtesy of mentioning different authors who have contributed, involving a completely different process. When I started writing this book, I felt that more and more I had examples coming from Albania or from personal experiences. So the biographical part became increasingly important to explain the philosophical concepts to the reader. This project was born very naturally and ended with “Free,” which is actually a literary autobiography centered on the theme of freedom. The idea is that through the characters and their perspectives, different approaches to the issue of freedom are developed. Everything else has come gradually without stages, and I find it impossible to synthesize.
Interviewer: So there’s no clear transition, and I like the idea of giving the reader what belongs to them. This would have been my next question, so let’s develop it further. In this book, have you given the reader the original truth as you think it is or what the reader wants to read?
Lea Ypi: No, because the author never knows what the reader wants. I also think that those books that start with the idea that they should give the reader what they want and that the author should find this out first, in my opinion, are forced books, and the process of writing them is not sincere. I think a book is a kind of dialogue that the author opens with the reader to express themselves, their concerns, and their philosophical, political, or social views. The author says what they think, and whether or not they find the reader is an open question that you can’t learn until the book comes out. On the contrary, in this book, Albania has taken a very important role. I remember when I started working on the book and this was understood, my two editors were very concerned (I worked with two different editors, one in the United States and one in the United Kingdom). The American editor thought that there is no market for Albania in America. So the American reader is not interested in the Albanian state, its history, or concepts related to the experiences that have occurred in Albania. She was really worried and told me: “We gave you the contract as a philosopher, and we don’t really need much about Albania. These are your experiences and your biography; the American market is not prepared for a book about Albania.” I insisted a lot with the editors and publishing houses to keep these biographical parts because for me, they were important to express the Albanian background of my philosophical beliefs. I give this as an example because if I had oriented myself to the market demands and the reader’s expectations, I wouldn’t have included Albania in the book at all; I would have done what was asked: to present the philosophical issues of freedom with examples from different countries around the world. So to use the expertise I had created with those short opinions in “The Guardian,” etc. So Albania in the book is a beautiful accident that happened against the insistence and expectations of the readers.
Interviewer: I want to thank you for this because in a way, you’ve paved the way for other writers to write “unreadable” things. Considering all this: does writing, researching, and dealing with editors and publishing houses tire you out?
Lea Ypi: No, it’s not tiring. Of course, there’s always a kind of effort with creation because every job has its toil, but I really enjoy the relationship with the editors; I’ve been lucky to have very good editors. I welcome their criticisms and am flexible as a writer. I’m not one of those who, when told to remove a sentence or paragraph, insists on their own. In English, there’s a saying: “You need to kill your darlings,” and I don’t have much of a problem killing them. When I think the remarks have a basis or will serve the text, I’m very open to suggestions. So it doesn’t tire me; as I said, everything has its wear and tear in creation, but especially the writing part is enjoyable. The more tiring part is getting the written text because part of it is done when you write, and the other part is when you think about what you’re going to write. You always have the thought with you wherever you are, so this is the most tiring and difficult part.
Interviewer: Being a writer requires a very big ego. You have to take on the great desire to say, to give others your opinion, or to tell your story. How big is this ego in you compared to Lea as a wife and mother?
Lea Ypi: I wouldn’t call it ego. I would say that every writer needs a kind of solitude. I would define this as the need to be alone with oneself, with one’s thoughts. This kind of solitude perhaps excludes others and may seem like ego, but I don’t see it that way. This is something necessary to process thoughts, write, and achieve a creative or artistic goal. The author must be alone; they need the space to be alone, to read, think, and study… And I enjoy this solitude of creation and reading when you leave the world outside and close yourself in your own. This is a very beautiful part of creation. On the other hand, I talk a lot about work; with my husband, my mother, friends, and colleagues, I discuss and dialogue because I think that when you bounce ideas off others, they develop better.
Interviewer: One of the most important things I noticed in the book was a very sweet English. An English that is not like that of London: heavy and pompous… We are always talking about written English. So the book has a very natural English. This question is a bit tricky: is this all your English, or does the editor also have a hand in the coloring? I ask this driven by the fact that there are many Albanian authors who write in English, Italian, or French and often don’t even bother to edit their works.
Lea Ypi: The linguistic and stylistic part is all mine. One of the reasons for this English has to do with philosophy and the academic part of my work. Methodologically, I belong to analytical philosophy, which is built on what is called “ordinary language,” the common language that tries to explain philosophical theories that everyone can understand. In analytical methodology, there is a resistance to linguistic pomposity that is related to the continental tradition. In Belgium, where you live, there is a different philosophical tradition. There is also a kind of rivalry between these two philosophical approaches, and I have always been attracted to the analytical approach because it seems to me a more democratic and open philosophy.
Whoever writes in a language that everyone understands, which is as open and transparent as possible, this is a democracy of letters in the process of educating citizens. So this English in the book is the same, in fact, as that of my academic books. Therefore, the editors didn’t have much role in this part but more, for example, in the construction of a paragraph whose description does not advance the narrative of the book. In this process, I can say that the book lost an entire chapter because the editor told me: “Look! This chapter is very beautiful, but it’s not needed; it doesn’t tell something that the other parts haven’t said.” By hook or by crook, I killed that chapter and removed it. In this part, editing has been more important: in cuts and less in language.
Interviewer: I had thought of this question for the end, but since we are on editing: do you have a team of pre-publication readers?
Lea Ypi: Like guinea pigs… Yes! I have my mom, my husband, and a couple of friends. With academic writings, I usually engage only my husband, who is also an academic in the field. But for this book, I had a group of “guinea pigs” with whom I tested what I was writing. This was very important because they were also my Albanian peers; I wanted the book to be as authentic as possible and to be read in an authentic way by Albanians. So it has been read by three or four friends from Albania who have gone through the same experiences, to see if the narrative would resonate with them. They have played a very important role in this but also because the book has political views and I wanted to have readers from across the spectrum: from the right, the left, the center; a political distribution of opinions that helped me be as open as possible to different views.
Interviewer: Was there the same quarrel as there was in media after publication?
Lea Ypi: Absolutely not! There was none at all. That’s why the public quarrel, at least in Albania, was a bit surprising because these “guinea pigs” who read it before didn’t notice anything troubling.
Interviewer: I suspect that those who talk haven’t read it at all. It doesn’t seem to me that the book takes a side to revolt; we all have our beliefs, but that doesn’t mean… The book’s story is so sincere, and there is nothing pretentious about it. However, let’s not get into this debate. What advice would you give to young writers who want to transition from academic life to literature?
Lea Ypi: From a practical point of view? My main advice is not to try to find what the market wants but to be themselves. This is very important as a writer. Writing serves to express oneself, the author’s worldview and perspective. It’s very difficult to write and seek what the reader, the market, wants. So I would advise them to be themselves. Then success comes or doesn’t come; you can’t tie the writing process to the guarantee of success.
Interviewer: Which means more sincerity and self-criticism…
Lea Ypi: The writer must be sincere and brave without being afraid of reactions.
Interviewer: What I generally notice in recent years is a lack of sincerity in Albanian literature. Everyone tries to write big themes but without sincerity. And what I found in “Free” was sincerity without the desire to please one or the other. I want to insist a bit on this: do you think our literature today but also in the past lacks sincerity, a fear of confrontation, for catharsis? Do you think it’s time to do something like this in general with literature and publications, to be more open to ideas without being left, right, red, yellow, green…? Sorry for rambling a bit on this… If you were to give young writers advice on this aspect, what would it be?
Lea Ypi: I wouldn’t give such advice. I’m not an authority on this and I think that every writer should find their way, their sincerity… I don’t think it helps for one writer to advise another in this aspect. I think literature is a dialogue that happens in society; a book is written and someone reacts… Moreover, I don’t think I’m someone who should give advice because I don’t have any big advice to give. I think one should do what they think, write what they believe… Afterall I don’t believe much in these authorities who give advise.
Interviewer: Then I’ll put you in that position: imagine we are in an academic setting. You are the professor, and I am the audience. What advice would you give me to open my heart and say everything in my writing? Philosophically speaking.
Lea Ypi: Philosophically speaking, I would say that a writer writes when they are concerned. For me, it was important to find that concern, so my political and philosophical thoughts and beliefs come from the fact that I have concerns about the society I live in, both abroad and in Albania. So the literary work or academic contributions are a reaction to these concerns. I see writing as a social, societal activism. Therefore, I find it difficult to give advice because this is a sensitivity that every writer must have internally and has towards social concerns, the issues discussed in public, or intellectual debates. When you find this concern, the continuation is a chain of reactions that come naturally. I really don’t know. It doesn’t seem to me that I have any special wisdom to convey.
Interviewer: I apologize for insisting, but this point was very important. In the book, I noticed a kind of coldness, a detachment in the narrative, a lack of the feeling of pain of that time; just a narration of what you remember happened then but without the emotional burden. This, I think, is the comfort of the book. However, do you think you could have given a greater dramatic feel to the narrative, or has your profession and philosophy influenced this case?
Lea Ypi: “Free” began to be written as a philosophical book. The idea was to explore the philosophical concept of freedom. The coldness in this case can be called rationality. This is a very rational book because each chapter centers on a way to conceptualize freedom. Even the division of the book into two parts and each chapter deals with a philosophical issue. This may not be very transparent, but it has been very important when I constructed the book’s structure. Furthermore, the style has to do with professional academic training, with the authors you like and literary influences. I have never been attracted to sentimental literature; I have liked rational, philosophical literature that shows concepts more than feelings or that deals with feelings through concepts.
Interviewer: Where do you feel more comfortable, in the auditorium or at the writing desk?
Lea Ypi: In both cases because they are connected. In the auditorium, I get many ideas, answer questions, and am stimulated; there, I begin to think about things that need to be written or explained better… or criticisms that need to be answered. When I sit down to write, it’s like being in a laboratory where you elaborate on the stimuli you received in the auditorium or what you’ve heard. For me, dialogue is a very important tool for developing ideas.
Interviewer: Do you have a list of books or authors that every new author should read? In this case, I mean more for those boys and girls who will start writing in English.
Lea Ypi: I have a general list; I think everyone should read the classics. For me, they have been very important, starting from Greek classical literature to the literature of the 19th or 20th century. I’m very drawn to Russian literature, especially Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. I think Dostoevsky must be read without fail. I’ve read “The Devils” three times in three different languages and have it as a bible that I recommend to everyone. I think reading should extend beyond literature: to philosophy, history, politics… to get stimuli from different fields.
Interviewer: You’ve said that the characters are half real; what do you owe to those you’ve used as characters?
Lea Ypi: The only distinguishable characters are family: father, mother, grandmother, brother. Others won’t find themselves; they are a mix of characters. Everyone has parts from a real person, but no one will find themselves completely because I didn’t have their permission to write. This was also an important discussion with the publishing houses, for whom it was very important legally that there were no external characters without their permission. My childhood friends, when they read the book, perhaps see elements from three or four characters they have known.
Interviewer: How many books or projects do you have in hand now?
Lea Ypi: Academically, I have two or three, while literarily, I have two, and I’ve started writing one.
Interviewer: What is it about?
Lea Ypi: It has dignity as its theme. Because as I said, I start books on a philosophical sensitivity, a concept I want to develop, and the narrative serves this concept. As a context, it will be Albania from 1912 to 1946. It’s the story of my grandmother, about whom I’ve spoken a little in “Free,” her life, and the hardships she went through in Greece and Albania.
Interviewer: How do you feel about success?
Lea Ypi: I don’t know… It’s a bit of a strange question… I think success comes and goes. When I achieve it, it doesn’t make me happy because my mind is on the next project. Now that “Free” is out and being translated into different languages, I’ve started working on the next one. I’m very concerned about what I’m writing now and can’t even enjoy the success of the first one with the anxiety about whether I will succeed with the next book. Success comes and goes, so you shouldn’t be overly happy but also not underestimate it.
Interviewer: Between the academic and the writer, who is more beautiful and playful?
Lea Ypi: I don’t know! They are different. I really like academia, the relationship with students, lectures, the debate with them, the criticisms, or when I’m challenged by them intellectually because it has a different kind of intellectual intensity that is different from the world beyond academia, that of artistic literature. On the other hand, literature allows me a creative freedom that academia doesn’t because you are always based on existing literature. So there is a scientific consensus with which every work begins. In academia, I like the debate and intellectual integrity, while in literature, the freedom of creation and the fact that the book makes you communicate with a wide audience, that people from different parts of the world find themselves in your story, which doesn’t happen in academia. Now I get many emails from readers from different countries who say: “I read your book, and it reminded me of my childhood in Vietnam.” Or: “I’m from Uzbekistan. I gave the book to my mother, and she said that it was the same there.” This is a kind of pleasure that doesn’t come from academic writings.
Interviewer: What is a typical day like when you write?
Lea Ypi: I don’t have a creative life. It’s an academic life mixed with a creative one. When I write, I have a preliminary structure of the book, more or less divided into chapters. For each chapter, I read a lot and then sit down to write. So I have it divided: one part is reading, and then I sit down to write.
Interviewer: On average, how much do you write in a day?
Lea Ypi: I don’t have an average because there are days when I don’t write at all, only read, and there are weeks when I sit and only write. I’m not at all a disciplined writer. There are times when I write all day and all night and don’t get up from the table until I finish the chapter. But I don’t have discipline and don’t do the same thing again the next day. I wrote “Free” from March to September; I had set myself the goal of writing a chapter of 3000-4000 words each week. For me, a week is 5 days because I have children, and the weekend is for them. So on average, 3000-4000 words a week when I set myself the goal of finishing the book. Then everything depends on what I’m writing, whether I can interrupt it or not; I can sit down at 11 at night and write until 4 in the morning… I don’t have rules.
Interviewer: One important thing for writers is marketing their books. “Revista Letrare” and “RL Books” are trying to bring Albanian writers to be sold worldwide, but it’s very difficult. What is the first thing a writer should do to market their work?
Lea Ypi: I don’t know because I haven’t had this responsibility myself. I haven’t managed the relationship with the publishing house. I had an agency that handled the presentation and sale of the project to the publishing house. The only thing I had to do was find the agency.
Interviewer: How did you find the agency?
Lea Ypi: A colleague academic who has also written books for the general public recommended it to me. In my case, it was a bit different because the first request to write the book came from the publishing house, so there was a kind of initial interest from it. I contacted the agency having an interested publishing house. My agency doesn’t accept submissions without a recommendation, and this process, I think, is the hardest for writers. I’ve always wanted to write literature. I wrote and published stories when I was 16 years old, and the reason I restarted seriously so late was because I didn’t know how to start this process. Literature is a risky process; you sit and write a book, and you don’t know if anyone will publish it or not. For me, as a person who doesn’t take risks for work and career, this has been a very big barrier. So I sat down to write a book for the general public when the publisher suggested it, not that I wrote it and then sought a publishing house. This is also a lack of courage on my part because there are plenty of writers who have a burning desire to do it, and do that, but I’m not one of them. However, to enter the English market, the agency is very important and very difficult because there is no formula. You can make a perfect cover letter for the manuscript and be ignored…
Interviewer: Do you read the comments made about the book online? Do you respond to them? Do you get upset?
Lea Ypi: I try not to get upset… now, there are times when I also do get upset because often it happens that you see comments that don’t seem “fair.” I think one gets upset when motives attributed are the ones you didn’t have. One of the things… not that it upsets me, but it makes me a little sad when they say: “Lea Ypi’s book has been successful because she gave foreigners the Albania they wanted to see.” Meanwhile, in the process of publishing the book, the foreigners didn’t want to see Albania at all. When they tell you that the book is successful because of Albania… in fact, the book is successful despite Albania. Because the truth is that they wanted to remove Albania from the book altogether. This is a concrete example: when you read that the book is successful because it made Albania exotic, while you know how much you struggled to keep those parts of Albania that tell the story of a nation and pave the way for other authors to show the world that there are texts, however small, however dark, strange, and mysterious, that have something to contribute to general literature… These are small examples that when I read the comments, I say OK and feel sorry. I don’t respond to anyone with anger because I think that every person, even when making negative comments, doesn’t mean to be bad. I don’t attribute bad intentions; I think they have their beliefs, and that’s how they read what I’ve written. Maybe sometimes I overdo it a bit with irony…
Interviewer: I’ve also noticed the competition you have with the “failed academic” with long hair, Karl Marx, who’s now in the first place in sales on Amazon, under Marxism, you or him?
Lea Ypi: (laughs)
Interviewer: Last question: do you Google yourself?
Lea Ypi: Yes. Absolutely, because I need it for work as well. For the academic part, it’s important to know what has been published, who has cited me… As for marketing, it’s important to know what’s being said when you need to give the rights to sell the book… To see what the expectations of different markets are, and this is a “duty” given to me by the publishing house to follow the interest in the book. So I don’t Google for fun but for work.
Interviewer: These were all my questions, and thank you for the exhaustive answers! Good luck, and we look forward to the next book with great curiosity!
