The longest journey leads you home . . .
'His breathing was so slight she could scarcely detect it, even when she lowered her face to his. The smell of him, like new bread, or was it her smell? She could not tell. He and I smell identical, she thought, smiling in the darkness. The barn was softly warm, and the warmth and softness wrapped around mother and child as they curled together in the gloom, breathed together, smelled the same.'
"Yenko," Anna whispered in her son's ear. "Your real name is Yenko."
It is 1927. In rural Bohemia a son is born to Josef, leader of a tribe of Coppersmith Gypsies, and his wife Anna. For the benefit of his people he is named Emil, but his real name, known only to his mother, is Yenko.
Following Yenko's story from the depression of the 1930s to the Nazi invasion of Czechoslavakia and the drama of the Prague uprising of May 1945, 'Fires In The Dark' is a breathtaking novel of epic scope.
Louise Doughty has created an authentic and compassionate portrayal of Romany life, and a wonderfully colourful evocation of a proud and passionate people about which so little is known, living through an extraordinary time in history.
