Author Description

This Youth Literature Prize-winning book is about a true story of a Gypsy boy in the chaos of the postwar (World War II) period. Based on the real life of Hugo Höllenreiner (Hanser), a German Roma, Sinti, who in his youth, after the experiences in the Nazi concentration camps, had been adopted by the liberated French prisoners of war on their way home. He is taken to France and raised there. Given the attitude to everything German, he cannot speak his old language, and has to be on guard, even in the orphanage. Fortunately, he ends up with a foster family who helps him to get along in his new life: He studies French, goes to school, makes new friends. Still, there is the fear. His real name is not known to anyone. In the meantime his real parents, who survived the Nazi terror, keep looking for him.