Everything in This Country Must

Zoli by Colum McCann is a powerful and morally complex novel inspired by the life of Papusza, the celebrated Roma poet whose poetry — shared with the wider world — led to her exile from her own community. McCann’s fictional Zoli is a young Roma woman whose extraordinary talent for language brings her into collision with the forces of the twentieth century: Nazism, Stalinism, and the well-meaning cultural exploitation that can be as destructive as outright oppression. Written with the lyrical precision and deep human sympathy that define McCann’s best work, Zoli is a meditation on the costs of translation — between cultures, languages, and selves — and on what is lost when the story of a marginalised people is told by outsiders. Published by Bloomsbury, this is one of McCann’s most ambitious and emotionally resonant novels.