Excerpt from Free by Lea Ypi, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I don't know which of these two groups gave rise to the tourists I met when I joined my mother for a school trip to the island of Lezhë. It was an unusually hot day in the autumn of 1988, and I was trying to cross the street when I heard several voices say, in French, "Attention! Petite fille, attention!" "Ça va," I answered instinctively, slightly resentful because I had seen their bus about to park and did not need to be told how to cross our streets, which, unlike Western streets, were not invaded by cars. Within minutes I was surrounded by more than a dozen humans, who looked at me as if they had finally spotted their favourite animal at the zoo. I could smell sun cream everywhere. It was unbearable. I no longer wanted to follow them, or to hug them.

How come I spoke French? they asked. How old was I? Where did I live? We're French, they said. Did I know where France was? I nodded. Did I know anything about France? That made me smile. Then I felt offended. How could they even ask that question? How could they insinuate that I didn't know where France was? I didn't want to speak to them. But I wanted to show that I knew more than they thought. I sang one of my grandmother's favourite songs:

Je suis tombé par terre, C'est la faute à Voltaire, Le nez dans le ruisseau, C'est la faute à Rousseau.

"Gavroche!" one of them exclaimed. "You know Gavroche's song! You know Les Misérables!" The others looked perplexed, as if they'd never heard of Gavroche or the barricades, or as if they could not believe what they had just witnessed.

I shrugged. They pulled out sweets from their bags. "Do you want sweets?" they asked. I shook my head. A woman pulled out a postcard. "Do you know this?" she asked. It was a colour postcard of the Eiffel Tower, a night scene. I was hesitant. "Take it," they said. "Un petit souvenir de Paris," they added, as if to persuade me. I thought about it. I thought about my grandmother. Would she be happy if I brought back from the island of Lezhë a postcard of Paris? My mother called me. I ran back to our bus. As we left the island, I stared at the group from the bus window. I saw the woman who had offered the postcard. She saw me, too. She smiled again. She was still holding the card, and she waved the Eiffel Tower as if she were waving a handkerchief.

Excerpted from Free by Lea Ypi. Copyright © 2022 by Lea Ypi. Excerpted by permission of W.W. Norton & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.