Zoli

More about the book

Zoli Novotna, a young woman raised in the traveling Gypsy tradition, is a poet by accident as much as desire. As fascism spreads over 1930s Czechoslovakia, Zoli and her grandfather flee to join a clan of fellow Romani harpists. Inspired by reading books, which are frowned upon in the Romani tradition, Zoli becomes the symbol of a supposedly brave new world of tolerance in the Soviet Union, but as her poetic skills deepen, the ruling Communists begin to use her for their own purposes and she must abandon her past and flee