Duke of Egypt
A Novel
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Flame-haired Lucie raises horses on her father’s farm. One summer day, she meets a dark, handsome stranger named Joseph, and it is love at first sight. But their union is as improbable as their love is deep. For Joseph is a wanderer, a full-blooded gypsy for whom all of Europe is a stomping ground. Despite their cultural differences, they marry, have three children, and lead a normal life—with one exception: each spring, Joseph takes to the road to return to his other family, the gypsies, scattered to the four corners of Europe.
More than a moving love story, Duke of Egypt is an exploration of gypsy identity, as revealed over centuries and across continents through the stories that Joseph tells to his wife. It is a tale of glory overshadowed always by grim reality that led to the gates of Auschwitz. Yet when the private world of Joseph and Lucie is threatened, the strength of their love and the strength of the gypsy spirit fuse to lift their story onto a shimmering new plane.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
De Moor has crafted this complex novel as if she were the composer of a piece of haunting chamber music, orchestrating the heartaches, loves, fortunes and losses of a wandering gypsy whose family is torn apart by the cruelty of post-WWII Europe, and who experiments with creating a different life for himself. As the novel begins, it is 1963, and 27-year-old Joseph Andrias's travels with his family caravan are about to be interrupted. On a wet summer day in a bar in Benckelo, in the Twente countryside of eastern Holland, he meets Lucie, a strange, wild redhead, who lives with her father, Gerard, on a horse farm outside town. It is love at first sight for this unlikely pair, who marry and have three children. Joseph and Lucie share a deep-rooted passion, a vast knowledge of horses and the desire to build a profitable stable. Despite the success of his marriage, however, Joseph cannot escape his heritage and the need to break free every summer, a practice that his wife never interferes with. Where he goes on his travels remains a mystery that is only gradually revealed in the grand tales he spins for Lucie, chronicling the heroic wartime deeds of his mother, Gisela; the family patriarch, Nikolaus Adrias Plato; and Jannosch Franz, a resistance fighter with a strange tie to Lucie's father, Gerard. The intricate, carefully calculated counterpoint of de Moor's narrative weaves the strands of many stories into a single glittering whole, illuminating the fate of gypsies in modern times and making a beautiful mosaic out of highly colored bits and fragments.
