My mother was a prostitute. My grandmother and great-grandmother were prostitutes.
Maybe I should have given the family business a chance...

To westerners, being Gypsy means being wild, romantic and free.

To Eliska Tanzer, it means being rented out to dance for older men. It means living without running water. It means not being allowed a job or an education. It means being stuffed into a bare room with all your aunts and cousins, fighting over the thin, stained blanket the way you fight over the last piece of half-mouldy bread.

It means joining the family prostitution ring when you're still a child.

But Eliska was given a way out. Slung out of Hoe School and shipped to England in a washing machine box, she thought she had made it. But her dream soon turned into a nightmare.

A moving and timely memoir from a powerful new voice in literature.