“Gypsies have always fascinated outsiders, but what has been written about them has usually been a mixture of romance and legend. For the Gypsies are a proud and secretive people, determined to live in their own way, deliberately turning away from the modern world - yet managing to live off it by their wits. Jan Yoors is the first person to write about them as an insider. His book is a sensitive and highly readable portrait of a mysterious people. He tells of their exultant celebrations, of their ancient customs and traditions - the Kris, when the elders sit in judgment on a member of tribe, the ritual curse, with its frightening power - of all the traditions that enshroud this fierce nomadic people which has taken our settled Western world as its hunting ground. He writes about the more practical side Gypsy life … the daring frontier crossings, the complex network of communications that binds one traveling kumpania to another across hundreds of miles, the yearly horse fairs, the in volved business deals in which Gypsy shrewdness is combined with all the apparatus of modern technology - the long-distance telephone, telegrams, post office boxes … The Gypsies is more than a book about a people; it is a loving tribute to the people Jan Yoors knew: to Pulika, the wise leader, to old Lyuba, the formidable matriarch, to Nanosh, who first befriended him, to Putzina, whose name he took, to Djidjo, whom he almost married.. . Mr. Yoors has succeeded in writing a vivid, personal and immensely beautiful book about this race of strangers in our midst.” BOOK JACKET