The Color of Smoke
A Novel
The first major novel about Eastern Europe's Roma, or Travelers (Gypsies), by a Romani author, The Color of Smoke is both a work of passion chronicling one young man's rise to manhood and an epic work that conjures up a dark era of world history. It is an undiscovered classic that has been published in several languages since its 1975 appearance in Hungary--but never before in English.
Inspired by the author's own boyhood in World War II-era Hungary, it is a beautifully written coming-of-age story of a Romani boy torn between the community of his birth and the mainstream society that both entices him and rejects him.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Menyhért Lakatos (1926–2007) was the prizewinning author of many books. His magnum opus, The Color of Smoke⎯inspired by his own youth in a Romani settlement, and first published in Hungarian in 1975⎯has been translated into more than half a dozen languages.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Ann Major (1928–) has brought several Hungarian books to English, including Paul Lendvai's The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat (Princeton University Press), and also translates from German. The author of a memoir, A Carpet of Jacaranda (Sydney Jewish Museum, 2013), she lives in Lane Cove, Australia.
