Fictional representations of Roma

Many fictional depictions of the Romani emphasize their supposed mystical powers. Romani often appear in fiction as nomads or a sort of supernatural "Deus ex machina".

Literature

* Lisa Kleypas's novel "Mine Till Midnight" features a half-Roma male protagonist.
* Walter Scott's novel "Guy Mannering"
* George Borrow's novels "Lavengro" and The Romany Rye
* Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem/novel "Aurora Leigh", where Marian Erle is Rom.
* Victor Hugo's novel "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame"
* Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"
* Miguel de Cervantes' novel "La Gitanilla"
* Bernard Ashley's novel "Johnnie's Blitz"
* Georges Bizet's opera "Carmen"
* Hermann Hesse's novel "Narcissus and Goldmund" features a Roma girl called Lisa
* Prosper Mérimée's short story "Carmen"
* Ana Castillo's novel "Peel My Love Like an Onion"
* "Dracula" by Bram Stoker features a group of Romanies working for the Count.
* Emily Brontë's novel "Wuthering Heights"
* Gabriel García Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude"
* "The Lyre of Orpheus" and "The Rebel Angels" by Robertson Davies features major characters who maintain Romani traditions, including the care and repair of musical instruments, in modern Canada.
* Stephen King's novel "Thinner" includes the classic plot device of the Romani curse. It was also made into a movie.
* Romani appear in several short stories by the French writer Guy de Maupassant.
* Canadian contemporary fantasy author Charles de Lint's novel "Mulengro" presents a portrayal of the Romani and their cultural myths.
* Rumer Godden's children's book 'The Diddakoi' (also published as Gypsy Girl, 1972), winner of the Whitbread Award. Adapted for television by the BBC as Kizzy.
* "Montoyas y Tarantos" by Saura.
* The James Bond novel (and movie) "From Russia with Love" set in a gypsy encampment in Turkey, features a traditional fight to the death between two gypsy girls vying for the affection of the same man.
* The novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway featured a Romani named Rafael.
* The The Adventures of Tintin comic book "The Castafiore Emerald" by Hergé features several Romani characters and a few Romani words. This graphic novel is very sympathetic to the Romani characters.
* A Romani character and references to Romani appear in the Otherland series of science fiction books by Tad Williams. They appear in part as nomads who disregard the borders of an advanced virtual reality cyberspace.
* Isabel Allende's novel "Zorro" features a clan of Roma who ally themselves with the titular hero in post-Napoleonic Spain.
* Colum McCann's novel "Zoli", exploring the life of a fictional Slovak Romani artist
* Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy features a nomadic race called the "Gyptians". Gyptians are roughly the equivalent of Gypsies in our universe, with the exception that they use narrowboats in place of caravans. Throughout the books they are portrayed as good and kindly people.
* Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy series of fantasy novels includes the Tsingani, based on the Roma.
* In Paulo Coelho's novel, The Witch of Portobello, the character Athena's biological mother is a Gypsy.
* Saki's 1911 short story "Esme" (included in The Chronicles of Clovis) features a degrading depiction of a gypsy child that is used to foreground the heartless nature of the English aristocrats.
* The latter half of Piers Anthony's "Incarnations of Immortality" series features the Romani in a hugely positive light, most prominent in "Being A Green Mother".
* "Gypsy in Amber" and "Canto for a Gypsy" by Martin Cruz Smith
* "Star of Gypsies" by Robert Silverberg is a Sci-Fi epic about the King of the Rom searching out the long lost Romany home star system.
* "FightGame" and "FireFight" by Kate Wild are teenage/ya novels with a charismatic and tough gypsy boy hero called Freedom Smith. They are thrillers with sci fi overtones.
* Tim Powers' novel "The Anubis Gates" features a band of gypsies led by Egyptian magicians and utilizes quite a few expressions from the Romani language.
* Much of the narrative of John Crowley's "Ægypt" cycle unfolds from an encounter with a gypsy fortune-teller, and revolves around the question of why people believe gypsies can tell the future.

Film

Other media

* The Cirque du Soleil traveling show "Varekai" takes its name from the Romani language and the characters represented on stage are loosely based on the nomadic way of life associated with the Roma people.
* The Chilean telenovela "Romané" features the life of the Romani in the north of Chile.
* Roma characters are frequently depicted in werewolf films, including Maleva the fortuneteller (Maria Ouspenskaya) in "The Wolf Man" and the Roma clan of female werewolves in "Cry of the Werewolf".
* In 2002 the WB television series "Charmed" aired the episode "The Eyes Have It" which explained Gypsies to be distant relatives to modern day witches. Much like the star witches in the series Gypsies possess supernatural powers and pass down family Books of Shadows.
* On the television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", Gypsies in 19th Century Romania place a curse on the vampire Angelus to punish him for the murder of a little Roma girl, by restoring his human soul (and by extension, his conscience) and forcing him to feel guilt for his crimes. Angel was doomed to misery until he could enjoy a moment of pure happiness.
* The videogame "" features Roma characters Kalderasha, named after the Kalderash, and his daughter Valentina.
* In "The Andy Griffith Show", episode 183 in the sixth season is titled "The Gypsies". A family of Gypsies (one of whom is played by Jamie Farr) places a curse on the town of Mayberry.
* In the "Star Wars New Jedi Order" series of books, the Ryn race are inspired by the Roma.
* A 2007 episode of the television series "House" features a Rom patient and family.
* In "Train de Vie", a group of fleeing Jews meet up with a large group of Roma.
* In the Horror Role-Playing Game , the Ravnos clan has Rom roots.
* Meggan of the Marvel comics superhero team Excalibur was born to a band of Roma in England. She was expelled when they saw that she was a shapeshifter, and believed her to be a demon.
* In the anime "Cowboy Bebop", the character Faye Valentine claims to be one of the Roma people, though this is later dispelled through her own personal flashbacks.
* In the Batman series of comics, the character Richard Grayson (a.k.a Robin and Nightwing) is shown to be of Romani descent.
* While the canonical origin of the supervillain Doctor Doom has varied over the decades, he is usually of the Roma people, and was driven to his nominally villainous actions as a response to the persecution of his family. As dictator of the fictional nation of Latveria, Doom has taken a special interest in the welfare of Gypsies, as that is his heritage, and often that race is first to be taken care of in a manner similar to Saddam Hussein showering his Tikriti tribe with benefits.
* In the HBO series Carnivale, the characters of Sophie and her mother Apollonia are said to be Roma.
* In the web comic The Science Table Comic, Alex, one of the recurring characters, is a gypsy and is adorned in what is stated by another character as his "Traditional native garbs."
* In Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock, the sentient anthropomorchi Trash Heap refers to herself as a 'gypsy Trash Heap' when she performs her only act of magic.
* Twins Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver respectively, of Marvel Comics are of Romani ancestry through their biological mother Magda and raised in the fictional Mount Wundagore. During Marvels Mystic Arcana the Scarlet Witch was one of the prominently featured mystic characters and depicted her Romani childhood and her encounter with other Marvel mystical characters. The Young Avengers Wiccan, Billy Kaplan, and Speed, Tommy Shepherd, are believed to be, and accepted as truth by the characters, the reincarnated souls of the Scarlet Witch and the Visions twins and can be classified as Roma through their mother.
* In the book "The Red Necklace," written by Sally Gardner, the protagonist is a Roma teen who has magical powers.
* In the videogame Psychonauts, a rival gypsy circus curses the main character's family to die in water.
* An episode of "Dennis the Menace" featured a group of Gypsies who visited Dennis' town, were accused of theft, and almost inveigled police Officer Murphy into marrying one of their women, to whom he had offered bread at dinner.

References