Jakob's Colours - Couverture souple

I thought it was a remarkable book - brave, big-hearted, and beautifully written. Harrowing too, of course, at times almost unbearably so, but Lindsay Hawdon meets the material with such honesty and courage we, as readers, can stay with it without feeling crushed by it. It's a first novel that clearly announces the arrival of a very talented writer. (Andrew Miller, author of Costa award-winning PURE)

A memorable debut ...There is a theme here that fits the complicated structure, about the stories we tell to spin hope from despair. The prose is poetic and on occasion luminously beautiful ... a powerful story. (The Times)

The book's fairy tale tone, and its themes of hope and beauty are matched by Hawdon's poetic language. (Independent)

As mesmerising as it is heartbreaking (The Times)

A deeply involving tale, hazardous and harrowing, Hawdon has a fine eye for detail in description... [her] feel for the subject matter is instinctive ... a well realised and unquestionably admirable enterprise. ... she'll go far. (Guardian)

There are moments of real beauty, and the central story is as mesmerising as it is heartbreaking. (The Times)

She writes with raw power. This book demands to be read. (John Humphrys)

Tackling the story of the lesser-known Gypsy Holocaust, Hawdon writes powerfully and sensitively about individuals deriving courage from what the can empathise with, during a terrible time. (The Lady)

Lindsay Hawdon certainly didn't pick an easy subject, but by heck it's an important one, and she's more than done it justice with this mesmerising and moving tale. A bewitchingly beautiful and utterly captivating story, which shows that hope exists even in the very darkest of places. (Heat)

Lindsay Hawdon's novel will crack your heart open (Sunday Express)

Inspired by the lost voices of the Romany Holocaust this heartbreaking and tender novel will appeal to readers who loved Sophie's Choice, Schindler's Ark and The Book Thief. **One of the Independent's TOP TEN SPRING PICKS**

'Remarkable - brave, big-hearted and beautifully written' Andrew Miller, author of the Costa Award winner PURE

Austria, 1944. Jakob, a gypsy boy - half Roma, half Yenish - runs, as he has been told to do. With shoes of sack cloth, still bloodstained with another's blood, a stone clutched in one hand, a small wooden box in the other. He runs blindly, full of fear, empty of hope. For hope lies behind him in a green field with a tree that stands shaped like a Y.

He knows how to read the land, the sky. When to seek shelter, when not. He has grown up directing himself with the wind and the shadows. They are familiar to him. It is the loneliness that is not. He has never, until this time, been so alone.

'Don't be afraid, Jakob,' his father has told him, his voice weak and wavering. 'See the colours, my boy,' he has whispered. So he does. Rusted ochre from a mossy bough. Steely white from the sap of the youngest tree. On and on, Jakob runs.

Spanning from one world war to another, taking us across England, Switzerland and Austria, Jakob's Colours is about the painful legacies passed down from one generation to another, finding hope where there is no hope and colour where there is no colour.