The first major novel about Eastern Europe's Roma, or Travelers
(Gypsies), by a Romani author, The Color of Smoke is both a work of
passion chronicling one young man's rise to manhood and an epic work
that conjures up a dark era of world history. It is an undiscovered
classic that has been published in several languages since its 1975
appearance in Hungary--but never before in English.
Inspired by the author's own boyhood in World War II-era Hungary, it is
a beautifully written coming-of-age story of a Romani boy torn between
the community of his birth and the mainstream society that both entices
him and rejects him.