Author | Rumer Godden |
---|---|
Illustrator | Creina Glegg [1] |
Country | United Kingdom |
Genre | Children's novel Domestic fiction [2] |
Publisher |
Macmillan (UK) Viking (US) |
Publication date | 1972 |
Pages | 140 |
ISBN | 0-333-13848-1 |
LC Class | PZ7.G54 Di
[1] PZ3.G5422 Di3 [2] |
The Diddakoi is a 1972 children's novel by Rumer Godden. Set in England, it features an orphan traveller or Romani girl, [1] seven-year-old Kizzy Lovell, who faces persecution, grief, and loss [3] in a hostile, close-knit, village community. The title is an alternative spelling of " didicoy", the Angloromani term for a person of mixed ancestry.
The Diddakoi won the 1972 Whitbread Award in the Children's Book category, honouring the year's best English-language work by a writer based in Britain or Ireland. [4] It was dramatised as a television serial, Kizzy (1976), which was produced by Dorothea Brooking for the BBC, with Vanessa Furst as Kizzy. Decades later it was adapted as a BBC radio drama of the same name, with Nisa Cole in the lead role. [5]
HarperCollins republished the novel in 2002 under the title Gypsy Girl. [6]