The ten short stories in the cycle published in the multilingual edition The Lost Country are an interesting mix of oral culture motifs and beliefs with the author’s own imagery.

As Luminiţa Cioabă notes, her prose works are influenced by the narratives and stories with which she grew up among Kalderash Roma. In her writings, however, the oral culture components are not simply retold; rather, they have been adapted in an individual manner and recreated as new stories charged with dynamic plots and depicting magic events.

Despite the highly individualist character of Cioabă´s works, the short stories also deal with topics that are ingrained in both the oral and written culture of the Roma throughout the world, such as the reasons Roma do not have a state of their own, the strong belief in and fear of God and the supernatural; respect for elders and wise men; the sense of not belonging and the associated suffering; the power of destiny and the injustice towards Roma on the part of non-Roma. They also contain motifs to be found in fairy tales and narratives from around the world: the transformation of humans into animals, magic powers intervening in the world of people, human sacrifice and predestination.