# Read the first page of The Bone Fire by György Dragomán Read the opening of The Bone Fire by György Dragomán free, no signup. An orphan, a strange grandmother, a revolution's wake. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/the-bone-fire-gyorgy-dragoman - Genre: Literary fiction - Year: 2021 - ISBN: 9780544527201 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780544527201&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780544527201 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780544527201 ## The opening I’M WAITING in the corridor in front of the headmistress’s office. I look at the photograph of the graduating students, all wearing white blouses. In only five years, I’ll be graduating too. I look at their hairdos; most of them have their hair in a ponytail. I grab my own ponytail and I decide that when it’s time, I will ask permission to wear my hair loose for the group photograph of graduating students. I pull the hairband out from my ponytail, I loosen my hair, I run my fingers through it. It’s pretty long now. I’ve been growing it out for quite some time. I’m waiting. I look out through the windows at the park. On both sides of the path, on the top of the black poplar trees, sit black birds. They are waiting. I look at the crows. I wait. I’m thinking about what the headmistress could possibly want from me. I’ve been in the institute for almost six months. Everyone is nice to me—the other students, the teachers, the caretakers. They feel sorry for me because of what happened to Mother and Father. I look at the trees; I don’t want to think about my parents. I wait. At last the door opens. The headmistress tells me to come in. I enter. There are two armchairs in front of the headmistress’s desk. One of them is empty—the headmistress nods for me to sit down. Someone is sitting in the other chair. An old lady. She leans forward, hunching. I see only her black sweater and her bony shoulders and, over her shoulders, a large black scarf. She holds a small coffee cup between her two palms, warming it, turning it around, shaking it slightly. The saucer, turned over, sits atop the coffee cup, and with her bony fingers, the old lady holds it down, as if she were afraid something might escape. I sit down, say hello to her. The leather cushion of the armchair is uncomfortable and rigid. The old lady looks at me; she greets me, calls me by my name. She has cold gray eyes; her face is stern, and her voice is cold too. The headmistress says that the old lady has come to fetch me. The old lady says that she’s my grandmother, and she has come to take me home with her. I say that I don’t have a grandmother. Or grandfather. I don’t have anyone at all. No, that’s wrong, says the old lady. She is my grandmother. She is my mother’s mother. I say that’s not true. My mother was an orphan. The old lady says no. She wasn’t an orphan, of course she wasn’t an orphan. She only had a very bad falling-out with her own parents. She went away; she left them after a huge argument, saying that she never wanted to see them ever again. ## Books with a similar feel - [The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-lowland-jhumpa-lahiri.md) - [Treacle Walker by Alan Garner](https://uncovered.ink/read/treacle-walker-alan-garner.md) - [Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante & Jenny McPhee](https://uncovered.ink/read/lies-and-sorcery-elsa-morante-and-jenny-mcphee.md) - [Moon Palace by Paul Auster](https://uncovered.ink/read/moon-palace-paul-auster.md) - [Man V. Nature by Diane Cook](https://uncovered.ink/read/man-v-nature-diane-cook.md) - [The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-queens-gambit-walter-tevis.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.