Summary
Menyhert Lakatos: Slike u dimu
The novel Slike u dimu is the first great novel about Eastern European Roma by a Roma author, a classic that explores the inner circumstances of the hitherto unknown Roma world and their history.
The novel, called One Hundred Years of Solitude of the European Roma, follows the life of an unnamed narrator from the age of 11 to 17 in a Roma settlement in rural Hungary, just before World War II. world war and holocaust. Tribal laws and customs rule here, families with many children live, theft, begging, dirt, hunger, disease and gendarme brutality are ubiquitous. But at the same time, the community lives passionately, in joy and noise, with great respect for the land and ancestors.
When a boy is accidentally shot by a local strongman, he gets a chance to get an education. For him, then, a life in two worlds begins: he is bright enough to do well in school, but too defined by his origins to be fully accepted. As the years pass, he turns to plans for making money, conflicts with authorities and adolescent lusts, while fascism is increasingly strengthening in society.
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