Böcker av Kapka Kassabova

"e;Remarkable: a book about borders that makes the reader feel sumptuously free."e; -Peter PomerantsevIn this extraordinary work of narrative reportage, Kapka Kassabova returns to Bulgaria, from where she emigrated as a girl twenty-five years previously, to explore the border it shares with Turkey and Greece. When she was a child, the border zone was rumored to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall, and it swarmed with soldiers and spies. On holidays in the "e;Red Riviera"e; on the Black Sea, she remembers playing on the beach only miles from a bristling electrified fence whose barbs pointed inward toward the enemy: the citizens of the totalitarian regime.Kassabova discovers a place that has been shaped by successive forces of history: the Soviet and Ottoman empires, and, older still, myth and legend. Her exquisite portraits of fire walkers, smugglers, treasure hunters, botanists, and border guards populate the book. There are also the ragged men and women who have walked across Turkey from Syria and Iraq. But there seem to be nonhuman forces at work here too: This densely forested landscape is rich with curative springs and Thracian tombs, and the tug of the ancient world, of circular time and animism, is never far off.Border is a scintillating, immersive travel narrative that is also a shadow history of the Cold War, a sideways look at the migration crisis troubling Europe, and a deep, witchy descent into interior and exterior geographies.

From a writer who is as dazzling on the dance-floor as she is on the page, here is the hidden story of tango: the world's most passionate dance.

A search for a cure to what ails us in the Anthropocene by the award-winning author of BorderIn Elixir, in a wild river valley and amid the three mountains that define it, Kapka Kassabova seeks out the deep connection between people, plants, and place. The Mesta is one of the oldest rivers in Europe and the surrounding forests and mountains of the southern Balkans are an extraordinarily rich nexus for plant gatherers.Over several seasons, Kassabova spends time with the people of this magical region. She meets women and men who work in a long lineage of foragers, healers, and mystics. She learns about wild plants and the ancient practice of herbalism that makes use of them, and she experiences a symbiotic system where nature and culture have blended for thousands of years. Through her captivating encounters we come to feel the devastating weight of the ecological and cultural disinheritance that the people of this valley have suffered. And Kassabova reflects on what being disconnected from place can do to our souls and our bodies. Yet, in her search for elixir, she also finds reasons for hope. The people of the valley are keepers of a rare knowledge, not only of mountain plants and their properties, but also of how to transform collective suffering into healing.Immersive and enthralling, Elixir is an urgent and unforgettable call to rethink how we live-in relation to one another, to Earth, and to the cosmos.

From the celebrated author of Border, here is a portrait of an ancient but little-understood corner of Balkans, and a personal reckoning with the past.

A revealing personal portrait of a little-known country perched on the eastern edge of Europe - captured by one of its most eloquent and engaging expats.

Second collection by Kapka Kassabova, a young Bulgarian emigre poet who writes in English but with a European imagination. Her well-travelled poems speak from different parts of the world and different moments of history.