Imagine being raised in one of the most isolated societies on earth, where it's illegal to

travel abroad, there is only one political party, and you have strained political relations

with not only the world's great powers, but all of your neighbours too.

Now imagine you're that same person a few decades later, but you live in the 21st century

London in fact, enjoying all the benefits of modern capitalism and globalisation while

being a successful author and professor at the London School of Economics.

It's reasonable to say that having experienced such widely contrasting ways of running

society, you'd have powerful insights into the meaning of freedom.

Leururpe doesn't need to imagine, because that is the story of her life, written in her

best-selling memoir Freight, it covers her childhood during the downfall of communism

in Albania and the painful years of transition that followed.

Leururpe, welcome to Downstream.

Thank you for having me.

You grew up in Albania at the end of the Cold War, this was one of the most isolated

countries on the face of the earth, what was that experience like?

So it was, at the time, felt very normal, actually, so it's only strange and isolated if you

think about it from the point of view of non-strangeness and non-isolation.

To me, there were things about growing up in Albania, which we were all aware of, the

fact, for example, that you couldn't travel outside the country, that there were very

few people who came into the country and that stood out when they came.

There was scarcity, materially, there are lots of cues for everything and food was

rationed and things like that.

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