India, Sept. 24 -- History is often imagined as a record of facts with official archives preserving documents to construct national narratives; and public memory makes up stories. These records tell us what happened, but not always what it meant to those who lived through it. Lea Ypi's novel Indignity, which was longlisted for the 2026 Women's Prize, explores this tension between historical truth and lived experience.

Building on the themes she first explored in Free, the author turns away from her own childhood and towards the life of her grandmother, Leman Ypi. Through one woman's extraordinary journey, she reconstructs a century marked by the collapse of empires, the rise of fascism and communism, war, political persecution, and the u...