Zoli
From the New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-winning, Booker Prize-longlisted author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin
-
- 9,99 €
Publisher Description
'A great book and a marvellously crafted story' Roddy Doyle
____________________________________
Zoli Notovna is a poet by accident as much as desire. As Fascism spreads over Czechoslovakia, she and her grandfather flee an unspeakable loss to join a clan of fellow Romani harpists. As Zoli shapes the ancient songs to her times, she finds her gift embraced – by her own people, and, for the first time, by the world outside their circle.
But Zoli has become an instrument herself – wielded by the hands of the powerful. And her greatness in her art will see her severed and exiled from the people and tradition she loves, setting her on a path she must tread alone…
'A hymn to specificity, a clamour against homogenisation … With each voice McCann performs an astonishing feat' Richard Eyre, Guardian
'A writer of large and driving vision … Zoli contains passages of stunning lyricism and sharp ironic force' New York Times
'Poetic and beautifully observed' Daily Telegraph
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his bittersweet fourth novel, McCann chronicles the imperiled world of the Slovakian Roma (Gypsies, to their enemies) from World War II through the establishment of the Communist bloc. After the pro-Nazi Hlinkas drown the rest of her family, six-year-old Zoli Novotna escapes with her grandfather to join another camp of Roma, where she discovers a gift for singing. At her grandfather's urging, she also breaks a Romani taboo and learns to read and write. She later becomes involved with poet Martin Str nsk , and her poems, which draw on her Roma heritage, are promoted by Martin as the harbinger of a "literate proletariat" and a new Gypsy literature. Her growing fame, however, betrays her when the Communist government appropriates her work for its project to assimilate the Roma. Condemned by her own people and, as a Roma, alienated from the Slovaks, Zoli finds her way to a new home. The narrative switches between third- and first-person, though it is strongest when narrated by Zoli. McCann does a marvelous job of portraying a marginalized culture, and his world of caravans, music and family is rich with sensual detail.
