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Every day, the world presents you with hundreds of headlines. What do you believe? Who do you trust? The Financial Times cuts through complexity with clarity, accuracy and global perspective. Its journalism is guided by independence, not agendas. That's why leaders in business, policy and culture turn to one trusted source for facts, for insight, for what matters next. Source FT Read more and subscribe@ft.com.
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You'Re.
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A
Listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast.
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On 19 November 2025 on Monocle Radio.
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Are the US and Russia trying again to bounce Ukraine into a flawed peace? South Africa seeks to style out the snub of a key non attendee of the imminent G20 summit. And why are young South Kore and indeed people in general, wearing the accoutrements of American universities they did not attend? I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts now. Hello and welcome to the Monocle Daily. Coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Tyra Schubart and Phil Tinline will discuss the day's big stories and we'll hear from Leah Eeple about her latest book, telling Albania's story via the history of her own family. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I'm joined today by Tira Schubert, journalist and fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and by Phil Tinline, journalist, documentary maker and the author, most recently of Ghosts of Iron Mountain. Hello to you both.
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B
Hello.
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C
Hello Tira. First of all, welcome to the Monocle Daily, your first appearance. You are of course clad currently in the owl costume with which we Haze debut panelists. But introduce yourself to our listeners. If you would explain who you are and how you got here.
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B
Well, I'm very happy to be in the owl costume. I mean it's chouette in French, which is very cool. And yes, I'm a journalist. I've been around for a long time. I used to do Middle east and Africa, but I prefer space nowadays. It's much more peaceful up there.
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C
Well, happily we will be addressing quite a few of those subjects in the ensuing symposium. But you have just got here from Iceland, a delightful if somewhat eye wateringly expensive country to visit. What were you doing there?
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B
Well, I was tramping around on the north coast of Iceland, just out of the Arctic Circle. In fact, two days ago I was just in a lava field looking at the same kind of landscape that the Apollo astronauts trained on and then they went to the moon after that. So I'm waiting for the second part of my trip.
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C
Phil, it is coming up for that time of year at which people are looking for things to stuff into the stockings of relatives who may have a certain morbid interest in gloomy undercurrents of recent American history. Do you by any chance have a book you would care to recommend to them?
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D
I do, but I should say it's not just gloomy undercurrents, it's gloomy and ludicrous undercurrents.
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C
It is. That is. That is a reasonable correction. The undercurrents are both gloomy and ludicrous.
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D
An important combination for Christmas, obviously. Yes. This is coincidentally my book, Ghosts of Iron Manson, which you happen just to have mentioned about the story of an extraordinary hoax concocted by left wing satirists in the 1960s who worked, as it happens, for a magazine called Monocle. Not the same as this one, of course, and it's got out of hand horribly and ended up feeding far right conspiracy theories, which is the really Christmassy bit.
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C
Listeners. It is an extraordinary and rollicking read. I can personally testify having read it and accordingly rollicked, but also by way of, I guess, an appetizer. Phil, you have a piece coming up in Prospect.
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D
Yes, published on the website today. I haven't spent the last few days in a lava field. I've instead been thinking about Trump and his battle with the BBC, which I guess has something in common with that. Looking back at the beginning of the BBC in the 1920s and the fact that it was founded very much not to be the kind of cacophonous competition of American radio which eventually produced Father Charles Coughlin, the radio priest, enthusiastic fascist, and I would argue precursor of a certain president.
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C
Well, we will be starting in Ukraine. At least 25 people were killed and 73 more injured last night in a Russian missile and drone strike on two apartment blocks in Ternopil, a city in Ukraine's west, about as far from the front lines in one direction as it is from Vienna in the other. In related news, it is being reported, reported that the United States has been secretly consulting with Russia on a new 28 point plan to end the war. Though for what it may be worth, Russia has sort of denied this. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, conspicuously uninvolved in these discussions, if indeed they are occurring, is in Ankara meeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Phil, first of all, in the last few minutes some details of this alleged 28 point plan are being reported by the Financial Times. They apparently include such provisions as Ukraine giving up the rest of Donbas to Russia, including bits that Ukraine currently holds, halving the size of its armed forces, recognizing Russian as an official state language of Ukraine, granting official status to the Russian Orthodox Church, and several other demands which I have to say at the risk of pre empting your answer, Phil, it is quite difficult to imagine Ukraine going along with.
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D
Well, curiously enough, I think this is what you end up with if the talks involved are just between the Americans, who in this particular iteration are relatively warm towards the Russians, at least on some days of the week, and the guy who runs the Russian sovereign wealth fund, allegedly. I mean it is absolutely one side of the balance sheet and not the other. So the chances of this getting anywhere would seem to be about as high as the Orban meeting that didn't happen.
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C
Tira at which point we have to wonder is that actually the point first of this 28 point plan being concocted and then then sort of leaked to the press? The idea is that Russia and the United States will be saying, well, we are trying to make peace over here, but Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants to continue this war. What can you do?
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B
Well, I think that we should remember that last night there was over 500 drones and missiles dropped into Ukraine by the Russians. But Donald Trump is still looking for that Nobel Peace Prize and he feels heartened by his Gaza peace deal which was passed by the supported by the UN's security. So maybe he thinks he's on a roll.
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C
Do they possibly think, Phil, that Zelenskyy is currently vulnerable to being bounced into something as listeners to this week's Foreign Desk Explainer have either heard or are about to the President is somewhat beset by a corruption scandal which obviously plays into the narrative which Ukraine's skeptical American conservatives have been especially fond of.
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D
I mean, they may be thinking that, I mean we obviously should be careful of spotting two news stories about Ukraine and assuming that there's a link that may or may not be. But I think the chances of that happening, given that however much Ukrainians object to corruption alleged or proven on the part of anybody involved with the government, that's not going to, I don't think, translate into any greater leniency on the part of the Ukrainian population towards handing over large chunks of their territory to an invading foreign enemy.
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C
Because surely, Tira, if there is going to be an agreement that Ukraine will agree to, it is going to be one that offers it some measure of security because I Keep thinking that powers such as the United States and Russia possibly willfully are underestimating the resolve of Ukraine's people and certainly of Ukraine's politicians. As listeners may recall, I was in Odessa earlier this year. But even speaking to opposition politicians, people who are no great fans of President Zelensky, and asking them, you know, does Ukraine intend to fight on? Their response was always, well, what choice do we have?
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B
Indeed, what choice do they have? And they have their eyes on a prize which is NATO membership too. We mustn't forget that. And earlier today, Lord Robertson, who was the former Secretary General of NATO, said, you know, there's no way that anything can go ahead without Ukraine being involved. But NATO membership is important part of this. And as many NATO countries have reached, realized they've got to give more weapons and more support to Ukraine, not just to keep Russia at bay, but actually win the war. And as one of them said, unless they do it there, we'll be fighting them in Europe.
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C
On top of which, Phil, of course, NATO is well aware at this point that Ukraine will be an extraordinarily valuable addition to the alliance in due course. It has developed a vast defence industry in the last few years. It has battlefield knowledge that the rest of NATO can but dream of, and a large and experienced military.
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D
Yes, I mean, obviously getting to the point where Ukraine is in NATO is not a straightforward operation, but. Yes, precisely. I mean, I think the degree to which Ukraine has developed expertise that no one in Europe has, I think, is particularly to the front of mind, I would imagine, in the frontline states which have seen Russian drone flights and interference and planes going over the border, even particularly in the last few days. And I think the sense that there's a quid pro quo waiting to happen there between Ukrainian knowledge and European support, you know, is one that it looks quite attractive.
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C
Before we move off this one, Tira, is there actually any, if this isn't an agreement that Ukraine is going to take terribly seriously? And I think it's pretty clear that it's not. Is there anything imaginable if we sort of reflect on the sort of remarks and gestures of President Zelenskyy in recent months in particular that they might conceivably agree to? I mean, the one that has been floated, for example, is kind of a West Germany, East Germany model whereby the country is partitioned, but there's kind of an understanding that, look, you'll get it back eventually, just not now.
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B
Well, that hasn't happened with the Crimea, and losing the Donbas region is a particular blow, because that's where so much of their industry and their wealth is. But other things are at play here too, because there's some ruptures going on in Russia we don't really know. We need the old days of Kremlin knowledges back. But the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has rather disappeared from public view because his negotiations with his overtures and negotiations didn't really go anywhere. So that's something to watch.
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C
Well, indeed. So Sergei Lavrov may have entered the staying away from high windows period of a career in Russia's public service, but a reminder that that foreign desk explainer on Zelenskyy's domestic difficulties will be available shortly. We will move on to Johannes, which is in the final stages of polishing the fancy cutlery ahead of this week's G20 summit, the first to be held anywhere in Africa. This iteration of the annual wingding of 20 of the world's mightier nations and the European Union has had an amount of unwelcome and possibly unhelpful advance press in the form of US President Donald Trump's announcement that he wouldn't be going and that nor would any American officials. And also that it was, quote, a total disgrace that South Africa was holding it at all. A point emphasized with extra heavy squeezes of that invisible accordion he often pretends he is playing. Also RSVPing in the negative were Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, though both of those countries will be represented. Phil, is it clear why Trump is so against this? He does have a particular B in his bonnet about South Africa generally. But he is, he's really not, not happy about this. He was suggesting that somehow the summit could be removed or that South Africa was unworthy and so forth.
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D
Yeah, I mean, the impression you get is that he somehow thinks that this is basically a kind of international version of dei, diversity, equity and inclusion, and that there could be no possible reason why a country with an economy the size of South Africa and the resources of South Africa could possibly have any justification for holding it. And Marco Rubio has said that basically this is about DEI and climate change, which he has pronounced to be anti Americanisms. The idea that climate change is anti American is one to reflect reflect on for a few seconds, along with other facts, perhaps. But no, I think the curious thing at play here, I think, is the kind of mirror of reality effect you get with Trump quite a lot. I mean, you're seeing with Epstein at the moment the idea that anything he doesn't like is a hoax. Whereas things that are hoaxes, that are something he likes are seen as real. And the idea that there is this sort of white genocide happening in South Africa and that the only people who should be given any sort of refugee style asylum in America are the poor put upon white Africanas who are being persecuted mercilessly by the tyranny in South Africa, is a very strange but rather easily read reversal of historical truth. It is very strange though as well to see America boycotting South Africa for this reason. I mean, I'm old enough to remember musicians singing about how they weren't going to play sun city in the mid-1980s because of apartheid. The idea that you're boycotting South Africa for this reason seems genuinely very strange.
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C
Tira Phil is obviously quite right to point out President Trump's morbid obsession with a white genocide in South Africa. That's been a recurring theme of his. Is there any imaginable non sinister explanation for that?
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B
Well, his friendship with Elon Musk. That's when we first started hearing who is born and bred in South Africa and a white South African, although now he has, I think a Canadian and American passport. But just not very long ago, the head of the main South African Agricultural Farmers Union, a white Afrikaner called Theodore, was very puzzled by this all and he said, well, I've seen a list of a thousand people that want to go to America. He says only two of them seem to be real farmers and he pooh poos it. But in addition to this, I mean, Trump has also hit South Africa with big tariffs, 30% tariffs, but strangely enough, just a day or two, he lifted the tariffs on oranges and they can now enter America tariff free. Orange does seem to be a color that he's very draw.
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C
There are curiosities in the rhetoric in both directions here. Phil, you mentioned earlier being old enough to recall, you know, various musicians loudly chorusing I ain't gonna play Sun City. I remember that record myself. But we have also heard this week South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa, who I suspect also well remembers that period saying boycott politics don't work.
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D
Yes, I was very struck by that. I mean, maybe this is a sort of very long term diss against said musicians from the mid-1980s. No, that does seem sl. Although, you know, to be fair, I think Cyril Ramaphosa probably has a rather better and more nuanced perspective on whether boycotts in the grand scheme of these work than I do. But no, I think he's, you know, I suspect he wasn't, perhaps Thinking about the historical resonances of that quite so much. He's just pushing back as hard as he could against Trump and his curious behavior.
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C
Well, if we try to think about this constructively, Tira, if the United States isn't there, and more to the point, if President Donald Trump isn't there, that means that this event won't be all about President Donald Trump because everything he goes to becomes all about him. Is there perhaps an opportunity here for South Africa and for perhaps other countries which get less attention at events like this to try and make a case for something?
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B
I think there is very much opportunity for Africa, South Africa and for Africa. South Africa is the only African country in the G20 which represents 80% of the world's GDP. And they will be able to talk about things without having Trump boycott certain events. But also I think it's worth remembering that this is the last two weeks of their presidency of the G20. And on December 1st, gosh, it's America that takes over the presidency. So possibly the next event may be in that new being built ballroom in the East Wing of the White House. And perhaps the South Africans may, may think twice about returning, about joining that group.
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C
I mean, I'd think twice in that I would not be keen necessarily on standing under the roof of anything that had been built that quickly. But I mean, but just finally on this, Phil, that does present a possible cosmetic protocol variety challenge opportunity to President Ramaphosa because one of the things he's supposed to do by handing off South Africa's presidency to the United States is hand it off in person to the head of state or head of government of that country who obviously is not attending, nor is sending any other proxies for President Ramaphosa. What is the sort of benefit versus cost of actually just full on empty chairing it, like literally handing the presidency of the G20 over to a vacant seat?
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D
Well, it'd be physically quite funny.
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C
It would be physically, it falls and.
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D
Bounces off onto the floor.
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C
Let's look at ourselves physically, potentially extremely funny. But it's. I can't see President Trump sharing the mirth.
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D
No, indeed. And presumably the Americans will have to find some way of squaring this with the G20 as an organization if they're really genuinely not going to have any contact whatsoever with the South Africans. I mean, there may be some sort of quiet thing you can do through the South African ambassador or something like that. I'm sure some sort of appropriate ritual can be convected to meet the requirements of the G20's rules. But, I mean, it does seem like a very curious place for America to get itself into, given that, know what we were talking about before and we'll talk about with space as well, you know, particularly the presence of China in Africa, which people have been reporting on for a very long time. You know, there's only so many times America can loftily step back from things before that starts to, you know, serve.
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C
It rather ill. Well, just an extra final thought on that one, Tira. Is there a possibility here that this does come back at some unforeseeable point and in some unforeseeable fashion to bite America? Because Phil's quite right, you know, Africa at a certain point will start to think collectively, well, if the United States isn't interested in this, the Russians and the Chinese sure as hell are.
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B
Well, China, as he said, China is in Africa big time. And Africa has a lot of those rare earth elements and critical mineral elements that China has, but the United States is not going to have much access to them on the current course they're holding. So, yes, I mean, Africa has those critical elements, elements, earth elements, that you need for green energy, that you need for industrialization. They also have the fastest growing population and the youngest population in the world, and they have a bit of a memory, and so they're not going to forget this.
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C
Well, to Germany now, specifically Bremen, even more specifically the Space Tech Expo Europe. And what appears another example of Europe being jolted into the overdue realisation that maybe it should stop relying on the United States for everything. The sum of the deliberations at Space Tech Expo Europe appears to be that Europe needs to get its own act together, not just in staking its claim on the heavens, but securing it. This resolve is gathering just in time for the European Space Agency's ministerial conference later this month, where EU member states will decide how much they actually want to spend on this stuff. Tira, very much your department, and we have ironically just been discussing Donald Trump's aptitude for making everything about him, even when he isn't there. Is this, though, another example of what people, I think, in Europe are starting to call the Trump effect, that sort of jolting reminder on a number of fronts that maybe we have been kind of taking a bit of a free ride on the Americans this last eight decades or so, and perhaps we should start doing our own stuff.
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B
Well, the European Space Agency has always cooperated with NASA as well as other international space agencies, but NASA has had the budget cut radically over the last number of years and that's predated Trump, actually. But this recent government government shutdown, which lasted several months, stopped a number of launches of satellites. And the Europeans don't launch often enough because the European Space Agency has a launch facility down in French Guiana in South America. You've got to be as far south, close to the equator as you can. It makes it easier. And it's about the D word here, defense and also drones. You want to have a lot of things up in the sky. If want to stay secure, if you want to check out security, if you want to be able to provide guidance for drones, if you want maritime security, land security, disaster response. All of these things are now performed by satellites.
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C
Just to follow that up, Tira, obviously there is a European space agency, but has it been your understanding that that notwithstanding there is competition within among European countries to make progress in space? We've seen this week Germany announcing its first ever space strategy. As such, does any particular European country, and let's face it, it's going to be France, see itself as the sort of natural leader on this?
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B
Well, the big space countries are France and Italy and Britain. I mean, in this country, 20% of the satellites that are zooming around over our heads were made in this country, designed and manufactured in this country. So we've always been a fairly agency in a space country in terms of European. But the European space agency is 23 different nations that are members of it, and they also have led the world in many ways in monitoring the climate as well. The Copernicus satellite constellation, that's a wonderful collective noun for a bunch of satellites, is used used by all nations. It's a free resource and it's something that we share. But Germany has just put a lot of money into their defense budget and their armed forces are going to be invested in in a way that has not been seen really since the Second World War. And that's a direct consequence of Ukraine and the drone and missile strikes that they've had on them.
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C
So is it fair to say, Phil, that a sort of renewed European interest in things space is significantly driven by defense concerns, the same defense concerns which have been magnified by the last three years?
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D
I mean, I think so. I mean, I think we're a very long way from the period in the earlier post war when space meant exciting kind of new frontiers and people bouncing up and down on the surface of the moon. I mean, this seems hard and pragmatic and urgent and expensive and something that people feel that they in order to make the case to their populations who are in many cases, including Britain's economic, in a bit of a pickle, that this is a matter of necessity and we need to face up to the fact this could come and smack us very hard if we don't sort it out. I think we're a very long way from anything that's not military. I mean, other than maintaining sort of Internet access and satellites in terms of broadband and so on, and as you say, climate change. But all of those speak to critical infrastructure, really. So, no, I think this is very much about what we have to do and what we are still in the process, slowly of waking up to.
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C
Just actually finally. Tira. One point to pursue there. Phil talks about that golden era that, that I think most of us here at this table recall where it did see exciting and human and perhaps even a realm in which countries which were rivals on Earth would cooperate in space. When you talk to people who are seriously involved in this, and I know there are lunar programs in action with the proposition of putting Chinese or Indians or more Americans on the moon, is that something serious space people take seriously, or do they regard that as a bit of a circus and not really the priority?
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B
It's part of the space exploration. But most of the space exploration of the solar system is taking place by unmanned spacecraft. Mars is a planet that's inhabited by robots. There's American ones. There's also going to be some British ones up there. And the moon has had five nations doing soft landings and there's a lot of science going up. Then also there's the asteroid mining that the Luxembourg Space Agency has been investing. And that could also be a very inexpensive and environmentally funny way of getting rare Earth elements. So, yes, space exploration continues on, but it's the defense and the security that are making the headlines right now.
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C
Well, to South Korea now, where it says here, the young folk have embraced the American tradition of wearing leisure garments emblazoned with the names of universities to the extent that they are wearing leisure garments emblazoned with the names of the actual American universities, big sellers apparently, including Yale, Harvard, UCLA and Cornell. Professional observers of such phenomena have speculated that it signals aspiration to study at one such school merely look like one has, or just that the wearer admires Ivy League fashions, generally old jokes department. I'm wearing a Cambridge tie. Could somebody please ask me what I was doing at Cambridge? What were you doing at Cambridge eyeing a tie? It wasn't worth it, really. Have you, Phil, first of all, ever, ever flaunted your alma mater in. In Such a fashion?
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D
No, and great point of not doing. Partly because when I was at Oxford, it was so strongly associated with A, rowing and B, sponsorship by Cooper's, Librand Deloitte that I wanted to shy away from both those things. I was very pleased to be there, but I didn't feel the need to announce it to everybody I met in the streets.
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C
Well, you say that, but when we edit this for podcast, we're going to put a sound effect on Oxford that sounds like you picked up a megaphone and barked it into.
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D
Oh, right, fair enough.
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C
To be clear, Tyr, I did not actually attend Cambridge. I'm not actually even sure I own a tie, but I've never of the university I briefly attended, largely because I think they would undertake legal action to stop me, given my own academic record. Big hello to the University of Sydney. Did you ever indulge in any such.
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B
I, you know, I had to think very carefully about this. And no, I don't think I have any clothing with names on it. And these young Koreans that are wearing it, do they know if they wore this in the United States, they might be singled out by these ICE security forces because the Trump administration not very happy with many of these universities that you mentioned.
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C
I mean, is there a buy in here, Phil? Perhaps. I am theorizing as I go along into the, I guess the fantasy of American college life depicted in American film and American television, which has a knack of making everything American seem much more exciting than anything you might be doing.
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D
Oh, well, that's only true. But there may be. But I mean, I went to Seoul, what, nine years ago to do a documentary about careers such as Korea's sort of soft power and the way that it's used its culture to punch way above its weight in the Far east, to the point where even Japanese people are keen to buy South Korean music and South Korean movies and tv, which.
- [28:56]
C
Considering the history, that is no small change.
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D
Genuinely an achievement. I think there's something a little bit more postmodern going on here and a little bit like thinking about the way that anime kind of took from American forms after the war, but then developed into something, you know, very much of its own. You think about the way that K pop uses the English language. There's sort of random shards of phraseology that. That appear in songs and they're not necessarily there because they're sort of deeply felt and meaningful. It reminds me a little bit more like the way that Jasper Johns used to kind of take a number or a target and turn it into a thing itself. I think there's something much more playful going on here. And the idea that poor South Koreans really just aspire to go to Yale, I'm not sure is quite the fullness of it.
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C
Tira, has Phil convinced you, will you now be going out and purchasing a semi ironic Ivy League garbage?
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B
Well, no, I have a much better plan because I do still go to Africa quite a lot and they sell all the used clothing of the world ends up in the markets there. So I'm going to just wait and pick it up for a few shillings, a few Tanzanian or Kenyan shillings. You know those shirts that were selling back in Abercrombie and Fitch and things like that for $100. No, I think I'm going to wait. Bide my time.
- [30:09]
C
Tyra Schubert and Phil Tinline, thank you both for joining us. Finally on Today's show, Leah Eepi's first book, 2021's Coming of Age at the End of History, was a surprising but altogether merited hit. An idiosyncratic and occasionally bleakly funny recollection of struggling through adolescence in a country Albania, undergoing an awkward transformation of its own. She has now followed this with indignity, a life reimagined which delves a couple of generations further in an attempt to understand the lives lived by Albanians of her grandparents generation. I spoke to Leah Ipi earlier and began by asking seeing a picture of a member of her family posted randomly on social media, which sparked the idea for this book.
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A
Well, I discovered this through a text message a friend sent to me saying have you seen your grandmother? Has become viral on Facebook. And sure enough, I went on Facebook and saw a photo of her that I had never seen before, posted by someone I had never met before, followed by hundreds of derogatory comments. The photo was taken during her honeymoon in the Italian Dolomites in 19. And although I had never seen the photo, I recognized it because I recognized the name of the hotel of which my grandmother often spoke fondly, saying that she'd had the best time of her life. And I had always sort of wondered what kind of person can have the best time of their life and can be the happiest person in the world in the winter of 1941, when the World War II has entered its most destructive stage. But there was nothing to search as far as I was concerned, because my grandmother had told me that all the records of her youth had disappeared when and the communists had confiscated all her belongings at the point in which my grandfather, her husband, was condemned with 15 years in prison by the communist government that had just come to power in Albania after the end of the war. So there was the photo I had never seen before and this thought process that I had been involved with for many years. And there. There were also these derogatory comments about my grandmother, some of them alleging that she had been a fascist spy and some that she had been a communist spy and some that she had been been both, which raised for me the question of, well, first of all, what was her life like and what was this, what was the truth about this person that I had been very close to throughout my childhood, but somehow always also had doubts about, in particular, this period of her life? And also, on the other hand, the fact that, you know, she was dead at that point. And yet there were these derogatory comments. And she had always talked about dignity and how important the concept of dignity was to her and how it had. Had helped her survive in the twists and turns of her life. And yet I wondered, well, can a dead person defend their dignity? And who has authority to speak of it? And how does one actually reconstruct and re. Give dignity to someone like that?
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C
Well, the book then becomes an attempt to, I guess, explore and imagine the life of your grandmother. But before you embarked upon this, which involved going through the old Sigurimi, the Albanian secret police archives in Toronto, what did you actually know about her?
- [33:09]
A
I knew that she had been born in Salonika in 1918, at the point in which the city had just become independent for had been liberated or annexed, depending on who you asked, by the Ottoman empire, and had become a Greek city. Salonika was a very vibrant, cosmopolitan, multicultural center of the Ottoman empire. The largest group in the city were sephardic Jews, with whom she had been to school, she had been to the French lyce. One of the most common languages spoken was French. She was part of this Ottoman old aristocracy. And yet her youth and her teenage life had been marked by the shifts of the interwar period. First, the financial crisis which affected her family wealth and status. And second, and perhaps even more important to her, the population exchange between Greece and Turkey and the shifts in population and treatment of minorities that followed the end of world war I. At some point, in part as a result of this pressure on minorities, she had moved to Albania, where she had met my grandfather, who was the son of a prominent fascist politician, and he himself was a socialist who had been involved in the popular front and been close friends with Enver Hoxha, the leader of the Albanian communist party. Eventually, later, after the war, I also knew that the family was condemned and the husband was condemned, condemned for agitation and propaganda, and that the family was eventually a victim of communism, was persecuted. She herself was sent to work in the fields. And it was a life I knew that was made of these kind of shifts and ruptures and lots of loss. She was separated from her family, and she was a single mother. She had gone from being a very, very privileged person to being a pure victim, in a way.
- [34:50]
C
I mean, this is, as you suggest, an extraordinary period in Albania's history. This is about the 1930s to the 1930s. So it goes from the. The Ruritanian monarchy of King Zog to Italian and German occupation, and then the. The long period of Stalinist paranoia presided over by Enver Hosha. And not to say, obviously, that your own upbringing in Albania, as chronicled in your previous book, wasn't strange enough, but when you thought about your grandmother's life, was there any part of you wondering how you would have coped with this and how you would have responded?
- [35:23]
A
I found her. I always thought of her as a kind of moral hero because at various points in her life, she had to make choices and she was trying to constantly think about her integrity. And, you know, for example, she was often offered to become a collaborator herself because many collaborators of the Sigurimi were recruited exactly by families like her who had access to those circles and to those elites. And for her, this is why this idea of dignity is so central in the book and was so central to my quest around her life, because she'd always said that the way she coped and what brought her, what made her make certain decisions was this idea that although she had lost status and wealth and power, the one thing that could never be taken away from her was her dignity and her capacity to try and do the right thing despite the circumstances. Of course, my life was made of upheavals too. I don't think they were nearly as traumatic as hers. But I did often turn to her for advice. And she was, in fact, a very important kind of moral, offered me a kind of moral compass in trying to navigate these transitions of first communism, then post communist migration. I mean, I migrated out of Albania, she went to Albany, Albania. But this question of how you integrate in a foreign place, I don't know if I would have the same moral strength that she had. I mean, I probably aspire to. But you have to be tested by circumstances to really know, I think, what you would have been like in those circumstances. And I found her to have a kind of extraordinary strength and an extraordinary capacity to reflect on her life with a kind of distance that is very rare for, or at least I think it's very rare for people who are victims and who have suffered so much and gone through so much.
- [36:50]
C
The book is framed as a kind of mix of, I guess, non fiction historical investigation and a fictionalized slash imagined account of your grandmother's life as she lived it. Did the idea of doing it that way just sort of arrive fully formed or did you work towards it?
- [37:10]
A
No, it didn't arrive fully formed. I had started more with a model of Free where there is a little bit of fictional license, but it's still very much adhering to the facts. And so it's much closer to reality. Although it's a work of memory. I mean, there is a sort of license of memory, but by and large it's that. And what happened was that in the process of searching and going to the archives and both the surveillance archives in Albania, but also in Greece, in Italy, in France and so on, we're trying to piece together her life. I came across so many gaps in the archives that it was really hard to reconstruct one life. But what could, could do was to read lots of different lives in that period and sort of have a sense of a generic character that with the help of then literary devices and literary methods you could all bring into one character. And so there, there's a lot of detail in the book that is factually true. Perhaps not things that were exactly happening to her, but definitely happened to someone in that period in that context. And so all the, the fictionalized elements, elements of the book are all based on historical sources and our historical evidence. So if I say she went to have cake in this shop where Ataturk had been to drink from these glasses, the shop really, the, the cake shop was really there and Ataturk had really been there and the glasses had really been there. And so all that micro history was reconstructed with the help of archival evidence. Even though it wasn't always archival evidence pertaining to her. It could have been to someone else, could be based on letters or memoirs of the period or newspaper, newspapers, clippings or reading research or PhD research on that period. So it was the, it was very, I think the fictional detail are true to historical facts, even though not necessarily historical facts about that particular person.
- [38:48]
C
But when you sit down to write this book, was there any self consciousness attached to the fact that it's reasonably certain that quite large numbers of people are going to read this one? Free was A huge hit, I suspect. Bigger than you or your publishers expected. A memoir of growing up in post communist Albania was going to be. And this is not an over subscribed field. There are not many voices writing about Albanian history. You know, it's you and Ismail Kader at this point that people are going to be thinking of. Did that, did that, I guess, inculcate any amount of nervousness?
- [39:23]
A
Well, yes, absolutely. I mean, I think anyone would be nervous after a book that is so spectacularly successful as Free was. But on the other hand, I think there is also a risk that we kind of become victims to our own success and we kind of go with something that's safe and that, you know, we've tried and tested and we know readers like. Then you don't experiment, you don't innovate, you don't read different things, you don't try and change too much because you worry about the reception. And since with Free, I wrote it in a way that was completely not thinking about reception, I also tried with indignity not to think about the reception given Free and to just do it in the way in which I wanted to do, to pursue the kinds of things I wanted to pursue. I did it, though, with more methodological awareness around this boundary between fiction and nonfiction and translation. Tried to be as honest as possible about, you know, even though you can't exactly have a chapter, a methodological chapter that explains what is the method of the book. I think it's very clear when you read the book that there is a methodological discussion going on there as well about, you know, how you reconstruct a lost life that you cannot fully access and who has authority to do so and how can they do it, and what is the relationship between literature and philosophy in doing that? And like Free in Dignity, Free was kind of centered around the idea of. Idea of freedom. Indignity is very much centered around the concept of dignity and different ways of understanding dignity in different historical circumstances in this time of transition in Europe. But for me, that philosophical discussion, just as it was very important in Free, it's also very important in Dignity and comes up in character and plot construction and in the kind of literary detail.
- [40:55]
C
That was Leah Ipi speaking to me earlier. A Life Reimagined is available now and very much recommended. That is all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists and today, Tira Schubat and Phil Tinline. Today's show was produced by Hassan Anderson and researched by Joanna Moser. Our sound engineer was Steph Chongu. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.