An erudite man cursed with a limp but blessed with insight. The years of separation stand like a wall of tangled weeds between them, but he eventually opens up. In a cosy room with red Persian carpets and photographs of his mother, whom he has never known, gentle Tom shares stories of his life, often funny, sometimes heartbreaking but never self-pitying.Though the story is factual, the author uses her strong eye for detail and the techniques of fiction to create this engaging and thought-provoking account about ordinary people who have lived through war, fascism, communism and the transition to capitalism. The story explores issues of identity, disability, emigration and family relationships against a background of the major political events of the time, from a perspective that challenges some accepted views.Through a gripping and beautifully written personal history, Gabrielle Gouch succeeds in creating a memoir as strange, rich and fascinating as fiction. This story moves beyond the life of a family, it depicts neighbours and friends, colourful characters who breathe life into the times.

    The early Soviet state feared that its Romani population suffered from an extraordinary and potentially insurmountable cultural "backwardness," and sought to sovietize Roma through a range of nation-building projects. Yet as Brigid O'Keeffe shows in this book, Roma actively engaged with Bolshevik nationality policies, thereby assimilating Soviet culture, social customs, and economic relations. Roma proved the primary agents in the refashioning of so-called "backwards Gypsies" into conscious Soviet citizens.New Soviet Gypsies provides a unique history of Roma, an overwhelmingly understudied and misunderstood diasporic people, by focusing on their social and political lives in the early Soviet Union. O'Keeffe illustrates how Roma mobilized and performed "Gypsiness" as a means of advancing themselves socially, culturally, and economically as Soviet citizens. Exploring the intersection between nationality, performance, and self-fashioning, O'Keeffe shows that Roma not only defy easy typecasting, but also deserve study as agents of history.