The Roads of the Roma: A PEN Anthology of Gypsy Writers (Pen American Center's Threatened Literature Series)

A unique anthology of poetry and prose extracts by Roma writers from 20 countries interwoven with a chronology of the history of the Roma since their departure from India in 997 AD to the repeal of the last US law discriminating against Roma in January 1998.

...unuttered sentences...minarets of grass...a grave in the air...tarots of memory...petals of skull...the dusty violin...white horses, distant plains...a gathering of silent hearts...ashes and lime...

These are the images of today's Gypsy poets. From their departure from India in the middle ages to the present day, the Romani people have faced slavery, pogroms, expulsions, hangings, firebombings and - in Nazi-occupied Europe - genocide. In this unique anthology, Romani poets and writers from twenty countries address this devastating legacy. Forty-three poems and prose extracts, most appearing in English for the first time, are arranged alongside an 800-year chronology of repression. What emerges is a portrait of a people struggling to preserve their identity in a hostile world.

The Roads of the Roma is published on behalf of the PEN American Center as a volume in their Threatened Literature Series. In his introduction Professor Ian Hancock of the University of Texas, himself an English Gypsy, unravels the history of the Roma since they left their original home in India and traces the growth of a written literature out of an oral tradition.

"We recreate entire cultures from fragments of pottery, and we go to great lengths to protect the sanctuaries of diminishing species. It is small wonder then that we should treasure this assemblage of the work of a threatened and wandering people whose culture has seemed to us ephemeral, if we have known of it at all." Edward Albee

"The Roads of the Roma has taken me into a new world of great beauty, imagination and mystery. The 'invisible people' step into the light along a path of poetry." Antonia Fraser