WRITER’S READS

Lea Ypi is a professor in political theory at the London School of Economics. Her book, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, is out now

The Iliad By Homer (eighth century BCE)

When I grew up in Albania, we didn’t have many children’s programmes on TV, but we did have several adaptations of classical Greek literature. Eventually, I ran out of supplies, so my parents gave me the Iliad. I was fascinated by Achilles: how could the strongest of Greek heroes be both so powerful and so needy at the same time?

Martin Eden By Jack London (1909)

Impossible love, art, politics, class divides, ambition, triumph and death. I don’t think I’ve cried so much with anything else I’ve read ever since.

The Demons By Fyodor Dostoevsky (1871)

My favourite novel ever. It depicts the conflict between populists and modernisers in 19thcentury Russia, and offers one of the most sophisticated routes into the political and moral tragedies of the 20th century.

Fathers and Sons By Ivan Turgenev (1880)

Women in 19th-century novels written by men are typically vulnerable, easily manipulated creatures. Not so the fierce Madame Odintsova.

War and Peace Leo Tolstoy (1869)

This kept me company in 1997 as I prepared for my A-levels with Kalashnikov bullets falling on my window sill. This sentence has stayed with me: ‘The higher the human intellect goes in discovering more and more purposes, the more obvious it becomes that the ultimate purpose is beyond comprehension.’

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter By Simone de Beauvoir (1958)

There may be other books by De Beauvoir that better highlight the views of this feminist icon, but I don’t think any of them are as beautifully written, relatable or touching.

Things Fall Apart By Chinua Achebe (1958)

This book is about life in pre-colonial Africa, but it’s also so much more. It explains how colonialism isn’t simply the result of Western ambitions to acquire land and resources, but at a deeper level, of ignorance about other people’s traditions, combined with epistemic arrogance – the claim to know better than them.