The Roma : A Travelling History

Madeline Potter

The Romani story is not widely known, and that invisibility has allowed fear and hostility to thrive. The Roma, full of extraordinary individuals and hitherto ignored moments from history, corrects this.

We meet the artist who chronicled her experiences of the Holocaust in Austria; the boxer who should have become Germany’s light-heavyweight champion only to have his win scratched from the record by the Nazis; and a eighteenth-century woman in London who was sentenced to death for kidnapping to be exonerated by the detective work of an unconvinced judge. Throughout, Madeline Potter weaves in her travels though Romani Europe and experience as a Romani woman in Romania and in Britain. Blending evocative history and lyrical travel writing with intimate accounts of racism and calls for change, The Roma is a powerful story of resistance, resilience and survival – and a celebration of a vibrant culture and misunderstood people.