RaveThe Sunday Times (UK)... astonishing and deeply resonant ... What makes this Baillie Gifford-shortlisted memoir so unforgettable is that we see this world, one about which we know so little, through the eyes of a child. Eleven-year-old Lea tries her best to interpret the events unfolding around her, and readers are left to decode her impressions ... The result of Ypi’s lyrical and evocative writing is the recreation not only of life under totalitarianism, but of childhood itself — the slow process of navigating unspoken rules, of working out the things your parents won’t tell you, and of understanding their fallibility. Ypi conjures up in loving detail ... the energy that propels this book is not politics, but feeling ... a book about what it means to be free, or even whether such a thing is possible. But it is more fundamentally about humanity, and about the confusions and wonders of childhood. Ypi weaves magic in this book: I was entranced from beginning to end.