The Rom: Walking in the Paths of the Gypsies (Paperback)

by Roger Moreau (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
[Moreau writes] about his wanderings with a deft, self-deprecating touch... that occasionally borders on the hilarious... definitely warrants a read. (Globe and Mail )

Product Description

In the spring of 1990, Roger Moreau left a successful career in international marketing, packed his bags, and went to India. His singular purpose: to unlock one of the world's great unsolved mysteries, the origins and earliest history of the Gypsies.

The Rom, "children of the wind," capture our imaginations as do no other people and, although theories abound about their origins, all that is really known is that they migrated from northern India sometime between the eighth and thirteenth centuries surfacing in Greece in the 1300s. Their tribe or caste, the circumstances of their exodus and their eventual diaspora remain a source of rich speculation to this day.

Armed with insatiable curiosity, a keen sense of humor and three wonderful, highly improbable traveling companions, the author set out to solve this ancient mystery, his journey taking him from Rajasthan province in Northwestern India to Istanbul in Turkey. Immersed in exotic, often mystical surroundings, informed by strange and remarkable encounters along the way, he leads us on the incredible and at times tortuous trek of the people of the kalo rat (dark blood), whose birth, he concludes, took place nearly a thousand years ago in the world's first concentration camp, an Afghan desert aptly named Dasht i Nawar, Desert of the Gypsies. Along the way, his quest, and his recording of it in this book, would change his life.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Key Porter Books (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1550138685
• ISBN-13: 978-1550138689
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #493,107 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Speculative History, August 22, 1998

By A Customer

This book is partly travelogue, partly glimpses into the history of the Silk Road, and partly anthropological research. The author, Roger Moreau, took time away from his job to spend several months researching the history of the Gypsy/Rom people. In it, he explores the following questions and proposes his answers, based on his research:

* Which of the tribes in northern India produced the ancestors of the Gypsies/Roma?

* Why did these people leave their homeland and move west?

* What overwhelming forces caused three tribes of Indian people to interbreed, overcoming deeply held cultural taboos against miscegenation, to form a new race?

* Why didn't the Gypsies/Roma retain the Hindu religion of their Indian homeland?

* What factors led to their arrival in Persia?

* Why did they leave Persia and move on to Constantinople?

*Why did they leave the home they had made for themselves in Constantinople and disperse widely among the lands of Europe?

* Why did the Europeans despise the Gypsies so much when they arrived among them?

* The best way to describe this book is speculative history. The above questions are not answered in any known historical documents that have survived to this day, and therefore no one can authoritatively state "This is the factual story." So Moreau carefully studied the historical documents that do survive that tell of events in the individual regions, and then he pieced together how those events probably would have affected the people of the kalo rat (dark blood). His speculations are very credible. Although he can't support them with historical documents stating, "The Gypsies/Rom did this because...." his conclusions fit very well with the facts that he was able to substantiate about events affecting the regions as a whole.

After describing his conclusions about the early history of the Gypsy/Romany people, Moreau then led into Book Two, which described what happened to them after they left Constantinople and spread across Europe. This part of the book was very difficult to read, because it told a story of many centuries of persecution, including slavery that was just as heinous as the acts perpetrated on the early African-Americans, persecution during the Spanish Inquisition, and near extinction in the gas chambers of Hitler. But Moreau's story of the Gypsies/Rom would have been incomplete without covering those horrors, and it helped me understand why I've heard people say that the Gypsies/Rom lived with many hardships over their history.

The thread that binds much of the book together is Moreau's description of his three Indian traveling companions--one from each of the Indian tribes that Moreau believes comprised the ancestors of the Gypsy/Romany people. To some extent, it was fun to read about the exploits of this group as they made their way across India, into Afghanistan, and eventually to Turkey. They definitely added a human element to the book. But at times, I found myself getting a bit impatient because I wanted Moreau to get back to the point of revealing his research, theories, and discoveries.

I wouldn't advise the author to remove his traveling companions from the book, but I would have preferred that he devote a little less space to them and more to the anthropological and cultural histories of the region he researched.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Europe's Outcasts, November 7, 2001

By	Vyto Stoskus "Bookroom" (Europe & USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Moreau's amazing personal account of his efforts to trace the history of the Gypsy/Rom is inspiring to anyone who wants to make sense of the past in order to avoid future social catastrophies.

Unless the Gypsy/Rom of Europe are understood and accepted soon, Europe faces another Holocaust. Even in countries as EU-ready as the Czech Republic, there is much reference to the "The Gypsy Problem" evoking memories of 1930s Nazi Germany.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars More Harm Than Good?, April 4, 2005

By	Gregory C. Mitchell "GCM" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The author spends the entire book describing his highly romanticized time travelling with three "gypsies" he picks up in order to follow "the paths" of their ancestors. Highly speculative, his theories are so fanciful (think "Foucault's Pendulum" style associations) and without corroboration that, while they may be fascinating and interesting 'what-ifs' for people versed in Rromani studies, I am afraid this book will only spread more misconceptions, spawn unrigorous standards in research undertakings and give an even worse name to 'gadje' ethnographers than they already have made for themselves. He stereotypes various clans and nations to make them fit into his limited perspective of them (i.e. he wants there to be a natisye of "entertainers," another of "tinkers" etc) so as to concoct a hypothetical story of diaspora. Unless you've read EVERY other book out there on the subject, skip this one. If you're looking for a good primer, especially as a 'gadjo', go with Ian Hancock's book "We Are the Romani People." Sadly, Moreau's journey was much more fun for him to live than it is for us to read.