Zoli

A beautiful and harrowing novel by one of my favorite contemporary American authors. It traces the life of a female gypsy poet from the horrors of World War II, to the stultifying world of Communist Eastern Europe, to a dramatic escape to the West. We see so much of European history through the lens of this incredibly articulate, sensitive soul, all told with McCann's densely descriptive narrative intensity. For a taste of the prose, here's the opening sentence: "He drives along the small stream [...]

I enjoyed this a lot for its window on Romany (“Gypsy”) culture in Slovakia from the 30’s to the 50’s and its portrait of the life of a fictional poet trying to put a voice to her people. “A” for the effort by an American author in trying to portray such a girl and woman from a first person perspective, but “B” for not quite succeeding in making her come alive for me. Maybe that’s inevitable for such an “alien” and closed off culture, so I still recommend the book for takin [...]

While I read this book I grappled with my lack of understanding. This is a book of historical fiction; I could not make up my mind if I wanted to learn the details about the life of Romani poet Papsuza (1910-1987), on which this book is loosely based, or whether I should just read the book for the delight of falling into the story. Only when I stopped trying to learn the factual details and let myself just plain enjoy the story did I enjoy the book. In the process I did learn very much about the [...]

"Παρίσι. Τελείως παράλογο. Πόσα σύνορα πρέπει να περάσει; Πόσα φυλάκια; Πόσους στρατιώτες παραταγμένους μπρος σε συρματοπλέγματα; Πόσα μπλόκα; Δοκιμάζει πάλι τον ήχο της λέξης και της φαίνεται πως υπάρχει παντού, σε όλα τα πράγματα τριγύρω της καθώς οι μέρες περνούν, ένα Παρ [...]

What would possess a white Irish male writer to write a novel about a Romani woman from 1930s Czechoslovakia? Darned if I know, but this is a rich tale of Romani life, racism, literary awakening-cum-appropriation, and most of all human grit. Colum McCann did tons of research, but more importantly he has shaped his protagonist, Zoli, with trademark sensitivity and masterful prose.After her parents and several other members of their Romani caravan were murdered by the secret police in fascist Czec [...]

This is the story of Zoli, a Romany woman of the 20th century. Hunted by the Fascists and Nazis, robbed of culture by the Communists and liberal European intellectuals, persecuted, despised, displaced, pitied, studied, Zoli’s story is the story of the Roma people. But, Zoli is also a gifted poet and singer who tries to exist in both worlds, Roma and European and can find a home in neither. The voice of Zoli is magnificently simple, broken yet full of dignity, intimate and unknowable. I loved t [...]

What a daring ideaace the life of a Roma poetess from early life under fascist rule in the dying democracy of Czechoslovakia to dying years in the utterly different but equally repressive "Free World" that doesn't like her unrepentant socialism her own voice.McCann's up to the task. It's a very well-built book, and Zoli (a boy's name in her culture, given by her grandfather to help protect her) is a fully realized person. She lives an exciting life. She writes amazing poetry (so we're told). She [...]

I loved this book. I started reading it on the airplane journey home from Vienna after a long weekend (and a previous novel by Josef Roth) immersed in the Hapsburg empire. It felt very appropriate. The book creates a rich atmosphere of the nomadic lifestyle of gypsies during and after World War II in the areas of what once was the Austro-Hungarian empire. The book also takes place in part during the transition years of communism in what is today Slovakia. I learned much about the Romani lifestyl [...]

a quote, to live by:wash your dress in running water. dry it on the southern side of a rock. let them have four guesses and make them all wrong. take a fistful of snow in the summer heat. cook haluski in hot sweet butter. drink cold milk to clean your insides. be careful when you wake: breathing lets them know how asleep you are. don't hang your coat from a hook in the door. ignore curfew. remember weather by the voice of the wheel. do not become the fool they need you to become. change your nam [...]

Colum McCann is a magician with words and while I didn't like Zoli as much as I liked Dancer and Let the Great World Spin, I still found myself mesmerized by Zoli and her world. The research that must have gone in to this for an Irishman to recreate the world of a Gypsy in eastern Europe during the middle part of the last century is incomprehensible to me. The book bogged down a bit somewhere in the middle, but the last quarter or so was so strong. I've got two more novels of his left to read be [...]

A literary masterpiece. A book you want to start again as soon as you finish it.full review to come.

McCann, a novelist so good that both Ireland and America claim him as their own, is the author most recently of Let the Great World Spin. Zoli is McCann’s sixth work of fiction and the one that immediately preceded Let the Great World Spin. What the two novels have in common, as does This Side of Brightness, McCann’s second novel, which are the three I’ve read so far, are an historical setting, a collage of narrative voices, a recurring theme of multi-cultural migrant peoples, and a strong [...]

Colum McCann, a very gifted writer, must have sought out or stumbled upon the story of a Romani (Gypsy) woman who, against convention, learns to read and write and sings her own poems to wide acclaim. McCann turns this into a novel, good enough despite the feel that it came from library research; such is his talent.A book will be more than worth the effort, however, if the author: a) makes you think about or see a thing in a way you never saw it before; and b) says something so profound, clever [...]

Perhaps one day I'll finish this book--if I somehow stop having access to other books, am holed up in my house, and have an ample supply of happiness and comfort to get me through the last tiny bit I have left. I'm perhaps one chapter from the end, but the thing got so unimaginably depressing in the last half that I think I'm finally making the decision to call it quits. Reading it has become like slogging through a field with no foliage except densely packed stinging nettles. It's painful and t [...]

Uh-oh. I’m about a hundred pages in, and the only character that did anything for me just bit it. I might come back to this (seeing as how I bought it), but for now I’m enacting the “life’s-too-short-to-forcefeed-yerself-a-book-ya-don’t-like” rule. I had high hopes, too, after “Let The Great World Spin”….

I had heard my roommate talk about Papusza, the Gypsy poet whom inspired this novel, after he returned from a trip to the Balkans last summer. Something or other brought the novel back to my attention and I ordered a copy from . After about two weeks I sat down and read the introduction. I was transfixed -- a man drives into a gypsy village in the present day, plies them with cigarettes, liquor, money, etc eventually earning their trust, he thinks, so he can interview them. When he asks about Pa [...]

Couldn't put this one down. Fascinating story of the Roma [gypsies] encapsulated through the story of a Roma woman, Zoli, with a gift for song and poetry. The story is very loosely based on that of Papusza, a famous Roma singer and poet. The story begins in 1930s Czechoslovakia where Zoli's family are drowned by the fascists' driving them onto ice, which then breaks beneath their weight. Zoli and her grandfather escape and find refuge with another kumpanija--musicians all. The horrible WWII year [...]

What an accessible and interesting read about Slovakia in the 1930s-1950s. We meet Zoli as a young Romany girl travelling with her grandfather in Slovakia before WWII breaks out. We follow her for a while as her life changes. Then we meet other characters how have a profound impact on her life post-war as they put her forward as a poster girl for Socialist Slovakia, which no one realises at the time (only afterwards we can see it's so obvious) was just a dream.Zoli is put up as the perfect socia [...]

In his acknowledgements, McCann writes that "We get our voices from the voices of others." This struck me because it's so much of what this compelling novel is about. Zoli is remarkable because of her voice, her stories of Gypsy culture and history. In the 1939s, when the novel begins, it's unheard of for a Gypsy woman to read, much less write and, only because of the tumultuous times she's living through is she celebrated for sharing her voice.But at what price?Similarly the rise of communism i [...]

Really had trouble caring about the characters despite caring deeply for story. The prose is, of course, beautiful given how McCann narrates but something is lost. I think, perhaps, that it is a really bold move to do lots of research pertaining to fiction. It's wasn't so much that it was fact overload or that McCann was trying to get the backdrop just right. I think at times he was perfectly lost in his story about a gifted gypsy to not burden us with that. However, maybe he was a little too lo [...]

Continuing on my McCann kick. Found this book an excellent foray into portraying the lives of Slovakian Romani people before, during, and after WWII. Harrowing images of persecution, destruction, and the fickleness of post-war Communism. Loved the main character of Zoli. McCann's writing gave an excellent sense of what her life was like at every stage, and how her fame as a singer was manipulated by the state. Watching her cast first as a great heroine of her people and then as a great betrayer [...]

This is the first book I have read by Colum McCann. His style took a little getting used to because it's poetic or symbolic to a certain degree. This was the first of anything I have ever read about the Romani or Gypsy culture, so perhaps the writing style was to reflect their viewpoint. It is about a poetess, Zoli. I enjoyed this book. I felt like I was with her on her travels and saw what she saw. Even though a lot of the book discusses scenery, and there is not a lot of action or many charact [...]

Two and a half stars.There are certainly a lot of good things to be said about this book: It's a National Book Award Winner. It's well written, with short, eloquent sentences that were clearly labored over. It's about subject matter -- a wandering, persecuted gypsy poet -- that not a lot of books have mined.My main problem was that I did not find the story interesting or compelling at all. I was not, at any point, curious about how the story would end, or about what would happen next. I found th [...]

With his beautifully written prose, McCann conveys a story about the Romany community in Eastern Europe over a period of decades. Thru Zoli you experience the joy and heartache of being different,assimilation, and the excruciating pain of exile. While I am glad that I read this book, it was disappointing that the characters were not more fully developed. That is where the book fell short for me.

Zoli by Colum McCann was down right boring. Stopped reading this book and returned the book to the library.

Pokus vžiť sa do rómskej duše - či to vyšlo/nevyšlo, neviem posúdiť, keďže som ešte nič od rómskej autorky/ra nečítal a tak veru neviem ako a čo je to "rómska duša". No ako sa píše v záverečnej štúdii, vraj moc nie I keď musím povedať, že snaha je, výskum rómskej otázky tiež prebehol (autor kontaktoval Laca z nadácie M. Šimečku a iných odborníkov). Inšpiráciou mu bola poľská rómska speváčka. Dej je spočiatku dynamický a plný vecí, ktoré som vôbe [...]

Colum McCann finds the world to be a dark, seedy place where nothing good can last. At least, that's what I think he feels after reading or trying to read two of his books. Last year I read Let the Great World Spin, as a part of my effort to read more male authors, and more literary fiction. Reading that review now, I can see that my feelings on McCann's writing are very similar now, having tried unsuccessfully to read his novel Zoli.Here is what has to say about the plot of Zoli, A unique love [...]

“There is an old Romani song that says we share little pieces of our heart with people and the further we go along, the less we have for ourselves until there is not enough left to go round and that’s called travelling, and it’s also called death, and since it happens to us all there’s nothing more ordinary than that.”Zoli is the third book I have read by Irish writer Colum McCann (following Everything In My Country Must and This Side of Brightness) and the one that made me finally und [...]

Zoli, influenced by her Grandfather, goes against tradition and learns to read and write. She’s an independent thinker and a natural lyricist resulting in her gaining popularity as a poet and singer. Not only does she defy tradition by finding herself in a mutual attraction with a non-Gypsy man, but against her wishes, he publishes her artistic works leading to her banishment by her people. Thus, begins her journey across war torn lands stumbling from one terrible circumstance to another until [...]

The central character in this novel is Zoli, a Romani singer and poet, whose life story was inspired by that of Papsuza, the Polish Gypsy Poet. It begins in Czechoslovakia in the 1930's when fascism spreads throughout Europe. Zoli is unique in her Romani community, as she was taught to read and write by her grandfather. Women in her culture were rarely educated, usually being married off at an early age (frequently to men much older than themselves). Initially she achieves fame for singing the a [...]