About us
We regularly meet to discuss books we read on the 3rd Sunday of the month during the evening (unless otherwise advertised). At the moment we do NOT have regular meetings during the day. We choose books through voting during meetings or by recommendation from repeat members. We read fiction and non-fiction type books alternating every other month. Please visit our FB page for more details and to interact with members. Check out our www.goodreads.com shelves to have an idea of which book we read. Our group is public, open to all, and meets regularly. New to Dubai. You are most welcome :-) Note: This group was originally called 'Dubai Mall Book Club'
Upcoming events
1
Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi
Media one hotel, Ciao Bella Restaurant Ground Floor - Media One Hotel Falak Street | Media City Dubai, Dubai, AEWhat we do:
We post books on monthly basis; everyone who reads or has read the book on their own time can join in. We get together, share opinions and thoughts about the book. We are here for the love of reading and sharing thoughts.Book of choice:
Thank you Geraldine & Bushra for book suggestion and volunteering to moderate the discussion in July
Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi
4.31 stars 27,452 ratings 3,074 reviews
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58085227-free288 pages, Hardcover
First published October 28, 2021
Setting
Albania, Balkans, Durrës (Albania)For precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi, Albania’s Soviet-style socialism held the promise of a preordained future, a guarantee of security among enthusiastic comrades. That is, until she found herself clinging to a stone statue of Joseph Stalin, newly beheaded by student protests.
Communism had failed to deliver the promised utopia. One’s “biography”—class status and other associations long in the past—put strict boundaries around one’s individual future. When Lea’s parents spoke of relatives going to “university” or “graduating,” they were speaking of grave secrets Lea struggled to unveil. And when the early ’90s saw Albania and other Balkan countries exuberantly begin a transition to the “free market,” Western ideals of freedom delivered chaos: a dystopia of pyramid schemes, organized crime, and sex trafficking.
With her elegant, intellectual, French-speaking grandmother; her radical-chic father; and her staunchly anti-socialist, Thatcherite mother to guide her through these disorienting times, Lea had a political education of the most colorful sort—here recounted with outstanding literary talent. Now one of the world’s most dynamic young political thinkers and a prominent leftist voice in the United Kingdom, Lea offers a fresh and invigorating perspective on the relation between the personal and the political, between values and identity, posing urgent questions about the cost of freedom.
3 attendees
Past events
98
