Children of the Rainbow - Softcover

The Independent Book of the Year 1999 The New Statesman Book of the Year 1999 The Daily Telegraph Book of the Year 1999 'Moris Farhi's impressive book ... is an absorbing read.' The Independent 'Children of the Rainbow tackles a subject rarely mentioned ... It reveals an imagination and compassion seldom glimpsed in modern fiction.' Bernice Rubens 'Moris Farhi has given the Roma - and all who want to understand them - a dream book for their times.' Neal Ascherson 'A novel of historical sweep yet firmly of our time.' Chris Searle, Tribune 'Compulsively readable.' Paul Binding, The Independent on Sunday 'Some writers go for the mind, some for the heart - Farhi does both. He knows how to weave a wrenching, gripping tale. But his writing also offers compassion and a spiritual dimension rarely found in novels.' Tikkun Magazine

Through an absorbing combination of fact, fiction and mythology, it tells the story of Branko, a Roma Gypsy baby born in the Auschwitz concentration camp, who receives the prophecy that he will be his people's saviour. Named Branko, after an inmate who has been compiling the Gypsy Bible, he is smuggled out of the compound and entrusted to a Red Cross official. Some thirty years later, on the death of his adoptive father, Branko sets out to remould his identity. He witnesses the relentless persecution of the Roma in Eastern Europe and comes to hear of the Gypsy Bible, the Holy Scripture that his namesake had miraculously reclaimed from the collective memory of the Roma in Auschwitz. This is the Bible which, hidden and awaiting discovery, prophesies Branco's leadership that will reunite the Gypsies and lead them to Romanestan, their mysterious homeland.