Madeline Potter on The Roma: A Travelling History

Madeline Potter was born in Romania in 1989 and grew up Romani in nineties post-Communist Romania. She now lives in Scotland and is a scholar of nineteenth-century literature at the University of Edinburgh, having earned her PhD from the University of York in 2020.

Madeline joins us for The Roma, a profoundly personal portrait of a people and their on-going journey, shedding new light on their history and what it means to be Romani in Europe today.

This is a history that is not widely known and understood, and that invisibility has created a space where fear and hostility continue to thrive.

Full of fascinating stories and extraordinary individuals, The Roma is a powerful corrective to the stereotyping and prejudices still faced by Romani communities. We meet the Romani artist who chronicled her experiences of the Holocaust in Austria; the boxer who should have become Germany's light-heavyweight champion only to have his win scratched from the record by the Nazis; and a eighteenth-century Romani woman in London who was accused of kidnapping a girl and sentenced to death only to be exonerated thanks to some detective work by an unconvinced judge.

Throughout, Madeline weaves in her travels though contemporary Romani Europe as well as strands of her own journey as a Romani woman in Romania and now in Britain. Deftly blending explorative history and portraits of a unique and vibrant culture with intimate accounts of racism, The Roma is a celebration of survival - of resilience and resistance in the face of prejudice and persecution.

"By turns heartbreaking and hopeful, this book takes us on a journey through centuries of Romani history and culture. In the face of modern far-right politics, The Roma feels urgent and necessary." ~ Tabitha Stanmore, author of Cunning Folk