Crows, Gypsies of the Sky

Author: Alexandre Romanès

In this book, Romanès recounts a unique life journey that seems like several lives in one, each no less mad and poetic than the other. It is the journey of a poet who transitioned from taming lions in the circus to taming words in poems after abandoning his family and choosing a nomadic life. Romanès writes his memoirs as if telling them with warm spontaneity and captivating lightness, going straight to the essential in astonishing and perplexing fragmented prose, joyful and painful at once, much like his flamboyant and colorful life. These are the memories of a man whose world is governed by two values: freedom and beauty. A man who prefers "a rose over a homeland," who never sat at a table to write his texts, and who always refused to expand his successful circus tent so as not to become wealthy. He stipulated that he would accept the French Legion of Honor medal only if he received it in his circus tent, among his audience. A man imprisoned in every country he visited, who engaged in brawls, his body still bearing the scars of stabbings. A man who prayed to God, when he entered the hospital one day holding his daughter in his arms: "My God, save her! Do not force me to become the greatest poet!"