“How can I know what I think, until I see what I say?” (E. M. Forster). How much of your writing surprises you?
All of it. It’s always a miracle, or rather a kind of grace, when thoughts convert into words. Thomas Mann had it right when he said that a writer is someone for whom writing is harder than for other people.
What is the first thing you remember reading or being read to?
“Kaschei the Deathless”, a Russian fairytale. My mother read it out loud to me, translating simultaneously from a Russian book we had at home. I fell in love with the story and learned to appreciate the beauty of the Russian language even without understanding a word.
Is there a particular sentence that has stayed with you throughout your life?
A sentence from my grandmother: “God is in our conscience”. She had a very difficult life, made of displacement, surveillance, persecution, and I occasionally asked her if religion had helped her take it all in her stride. This was her reply. Later I discovered something similar in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
What is the most interesting item on your bookshelf?
An eighteenth-century volume of Shakespeare’s tragedies. It belonged to my grandfather, and it survived the confiscation of all our family property when he was arrested by the Albanian communist government in 1946. At the time, the book had been lent to someone who returned it decades later.
Have you ever regretted publishing something?
No. But I don’t always agree with my younger self. Sometimes I return to my past writings for their archival value, they reveal all the constraints and thought processes of a different stage of my life. I don’t think consistency is necessary, so long as there is sincerity.
Proust had madeleines. Which foods or meals trigger your memory?
The smell of rakia (Albanian schnapps). It reminds me of my grandmother and the cold school mornings on which I was offered it to keep warm …
Have you had any notable experiences meeting authors you admire?
I remember being taken to show my poems to the Albanian author Ismail Kadare when I was ten or so and he commented on my looks instead. It may be true that I was more beautiful than my poem at the time.
Do you have a favourite bookshop?
Babel bookshop by the Pyramid in Tirana. It has nice tables on the terrace outside, where one can sit to read facing government offices and think about the relation between vita activa and vita contemplativa.
How does distraction inform your writing?
Once I manage to get going, I am not easily distracted. It is hard for people in my family because I keep writing in my head even when I am supposed to have stopped.
What are you currently reading or watching?
Maxim Gorky’s Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev, a wonderful little book which is as much about the rivalry and solidarity between writers as it is about writing life itself. And I recently loved re-watching Gandhi with my children.
Who has influenced your writing?
My favourite books are nineteenth-century Russian classics: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Lermontov, Pushkin, Gogol, Goncharov … I could go on.
Which piece of music have you listened to the most in your life?
Probably REM’s “Losing my Religion”.
Do your ideas form themselves in your head or on the page?
A bit of both. When I start writing I have a fairly clear idea of what I want to say, but I also change and develop as I write.
What is the worst job you ever had?
Having to sell a charity magazine on the metro to people who were not interested in buying it.
If you could choose any piece of art to hang above your desk, what would it be?
El Lissitzky’s “Beat the Whites with a Red Wedge”.
What was your favourite text studied at school?
Dante’s La Divina Commedia. I returned to it again for a university exam. After reading the last canto, it is easy to believe in God, or rather, even harder to think those verses could have been written by a human.
Which font do you write in?
The default one.
What does a writing day look like for you?
It’s always too short. I’m not a morning person, I’ve always been much more productive at night. The schedule is not so compatible with having children so I always go to bed a little frustrated, wishing I could keep going. Unfortunately, in the morning all my best ideas seem to have been kidnapped in my sleep.
Which other art forms are necessary to your writing?
All of them, but if I had to choose I would say film.
Where do you seek refuge?
With my family.
Lea Ypi holds the Ralph Miliband Chair in Politics and Philosophy at LSE. Her first trade book, Free: Coming of age at the end of history won the Ondaatje Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford.
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