Authors & Works

Martin Šmaus- Děvčátko, rozdělej ohníček…

Translation: Christine Laferrière

A tale about a life story/wandering of a Gypsy boy Andrej Dunka begins in a colony Poljana which is located right next to the Soviet border but he soon moves to Prague quarter of Žižkov. The family sends the young Andrej to steel. The boy undergoes a series of ‘assimilation institutions’, crosses the republic on a train several times, meets new people… It is a wonderful, cruel, unique and atypical story - a story about the post war situation of Slovakian Gypsies who came to the Czech countries. The author combines his literary faculty with a catching story and an explicit socio-economic message.