The Gypsies and their Journey

Bury Me Standing

'A remarkable achievement. A gripping, original work' - Edward W. Said

Compassionate, amusing, sardonic and highly intelligent

Isabel Fonseca's book is literally a revelation: a hidden world - at once ignored and secretive, persecuted and unknown - is uncovered in these absorbing pages. She writes with grace, insight and passion, and peoples her text with vibrant characters brought vividly to life. It is a magnificent achievement

A grand panorama of European gypsydom, its history, its present condition and its future prospects

A passionate and dramatic defence of the defenceless... This beautifully written story speaks in a way of all who do not want to submit to he reverses of fortune, who seek their own place on earth

An utterly fascinating, and even inspiring, book

Isabel Fonseca was born in New York and educated at Columbia University and Oxford. She was an assistant editor at the Times Literary Supplement and has written for a wide range of publications, from the Wall Street Journal to Vogue. Her first book, Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, has been an international bestseller and her first novel, Attachment, was published to critical acclaim in 2008. She lives in London with her husband and their two daughters.

Gypsies have always intrigued and fascinated - partly because of their mysterious origins, and partly because of the romance of nomadism. But because they resist assimilation, having survived as a distinct people for over a thousand years, they have also been the victims of other people's nationalism and xenophobia. 
 
In this fascinating and timely study, Fonseca focuses particularly on the gypsies in Eastern Europe (an estimated 6 million), and their future as a distinct race within a nationalist Europe. While researching the book, Fonseca learned Romany and stayed with the gypsies, becoming deeply involved with their lives, and befriending several gypsy kings. 
 
The result is a clolourful and frank book, filled with enthusiasm and curiosity, without lapsing into piety or romanticism.

Isabel Fonseca

Just thinking of this novel, I smile... so gratifyingly readable. When it comes to deciphering our new world and its emotional intricacies, Fonseca is spot-on

A searing tale of middle-aged anxiety, so accomplished and pertinent, witty and wise

Fonseca possesses a wonderful eye and vocabulary for the observable world, a natural gift for portraiture and a nasty wit about characters we're not supposed to like... All is perfectly suited to her complex subject, one worth taking seriously: the difficulty of loving someone you already love, and its corollary, the stony impenetrability of others

An impressive debut...it is insistent, weighty, carefully and densely composed....this is an adult book in all respects, reflecting, with an inquiring intelligence and emotional honesty

She has an expressive turn of phrase and a gift for evoking a sense of place

Attachment faces the uncomfortable subject of female ageing with wry, disabused humour...read her book on its own feminist terms'

Fonseca's prose is fluent, confident and often funny ... she has a gift for satire that glimmers through this novel. And a near-perfect ear for nuances of speech. Attachment is ferociously well observed. Both physiologically and socially ... as a first novel, the signs of greater things are clearly there

Fonseca's voice - poised, particular, exotic - rises above her plot

Fonseca's talent lies in describing the texture of daily life: the mango with a 'skin like sunset', the pizza boxes that open 'like laptops' ... she is good on the sweep of history and the cultural climate of previous times ... telling details of character - particularly the male characters, are captured well

Isabel Fonseca's slinkily assured debut novel shows a wry appreciation of the complexities of modern love...a novel that presumes to put a woman's mid-life crisis - sexual, spiritual and intellectual - centre stage

this smart, clammy drama, manages to be both unsettling and touching

A witty exploration of the preoccupations of middle age - sex, serious illness, the death of a parent - its main attraction being the voice, at once tough, funny and lonely, of the inimitable Jean.

Fonesca's debut novel is a funny, heart rendering account of the virtues of love and desire, confounded against the everyday.

After more than twenty years together, Jean and Mark revel in a sabbatical on a remote tropical island. Life seems idyllic. Until, that is, Jean opens a salacious love-letter addressed to Mark. Looking for answers she goes undercover with a surreptitious correspondence that propels her on to alarming and illuminating adventures of her own...

Isabel Fonseca

Praise for Attachment

Just thinking of this novel, I smile... so gratifyingly readable. When it comes to deciphering our new world and its emotional intricacies, Fonseca is spot-on

A searing tale of middle-aged anxiety, so accomplished and pertinent, witty and wise

Fonseca possesses a wonderful eye and vocabulary for the observable world, a natural gift for portraiture and a nasty wit about characters we're not supposed to like... All is perfectly suited to her complex subject ...

Just thinking of this novel, I smile... so gratifyingly readable. When it comes to deciphering our new world and its emotional intricacies, Fonseca is spot-on

A searing tale of middle-aged anxiety, so accomplished and pertinent, witty and wise

Fonseca possesses a wonderful eye and vocabulary for the observable world, a natural gift for portraiture and a nasty wit about characters we're not supposed to like... All is perfectly suited to her complex subject ...

Just thinking of this novel, I smile... so gratifyingly readable. When it comes to deciphering our new world and its emotional intricacies, Fonseca is spot-on

A searing tale of middle-aged anxiety, so accomplished and pertinent, witty and wise

Fonseca possesses a wonderful eye and vocabulary for the observable world, a natural gift for portraiture and a nasty wit about characters we're not supposed to like... All is perfectly suited to her complex subject ...

Books by Isabel Fonseca

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