N'ENTRE PAS DANS MON ÂME AVEC TES CHAUSSURES

With grace, this first novel takes on a little-known page of French history and forms a vibrant homage to the Rom community.

In 1940, Alba was a girl of fourteen.Her family made their living in a traveling show touring within a fifty kilometer radius of Saint-Jean d'Angely, in Charente Maritime, France. Identity checks became restrictive and, in April, came the decree forbidding the movement of gypsies in time of war. Soon, the Kommandantur required that all gypsies in the region be rounded up under the surveillance of the French police. With hundreds of others, exhausted by hours of walking, Alba crossed the threshold of the internment camp of Alliers, south of Angoulème, in November. Little did she imagine she would spend six long years here, between horror and a thirst for life. In twenty or so chapters constructed like so many tableaux suspended in time, Paola Pigani recounts how Alba grew to womanhood despite the bleakness, how she and her family managed to love, to bear children, and to work amidst this madness of mankind. Paola Pigani was born in 1963 to Italian parents who had emigrated to the Charente region of France. As an adolescent, she mingled with gypsy families and, in particular, a woman who would become the inspiration for the character of Alba. An old photo and bits of memories told by the descendants of this woman led to the writing of this first novel (supported by an arts grant from ARALD in 2011). A poet and short story writer, in 2006 the author won the "Prix Prométhée" for short stories with her collection Concertina, published by Éditions du Rocher. She lives today in Lyon where she divides her time between writing and her work as an educator.