Explore the Rich History and Culture of Europe's Borders: A Journey to the Edge

Christopher Allworth: Incisive and imaginate language. wonderful read

Canada on Mar 16, 2023

Barbara: A book for our times. Ghosts of the past which foretell the present and the future. Refuge sought in exile and homecoming and the wonder and beauty of a haunted landscape.

Canada on Mar 03, 2023

DavidDavid: Living in Bulgaria I like to research its real history. This is because much of it was written by the Russians so its not accurate or true...The author writes truly and accurately in a very readable way.

Germany on Feb 22, 2023

Momchil Kyurkchiev: As a native Bulgarian living abroad, this book brings me back home. After reading it, I visited Strandja for myself (first time). This place is ancient. I'm just on love with it. Thank you, Kapka, for putting the magic of Strandja on paper so well.

United States on Sep 05, 2022

RLRL: Let me start by admitting that the writers I admire include Michael Ondaatje, Anthony Doerr, Tia Obrecht, Louis de Bernieres (every other book, Michael Chabon) and, of course, Garcia Marquez. Kapka Kassabova is not there yet but she is getting closer with each book. Borders is stunning in its evocation of the land and the denizens of this dark and dangerous part of the world - the moving boundaries where Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria have, for centuries, met.

Having lived in northern Greece and visited Bulgaria about the time Kassabova was born there, I can attest to the all that she describes lurking in the shadows. But Kassabova has a brilliance not only in bringing the soul of a place into language but also describing with great depth and understanding the darkness and the himanity and humor of the various characters she met in her travels there.
Read this book (of her equally impressive book on tango called Twelve Minutes of Love) even if you never go anywhere near this part of the world. It is about roots and danger and history and the resiliency of the human spirit.

United States on Nov 01, 2019

Ralph Blumenau: Kassabova was born in 1973 in the then communist Bulgaria. She emigrated with her family in 1992 and now lives in Scotland. In 1984 she and her family had gone on a holiday in a coastal town just north of the then uncrossable border with Turkey, and she had been haunted by this border ever since. Thirty years later, she re-visited the area and could now freely criss-cross the borders between Bulgarian, Turkish and Greek Thrace.

Part One is about the first part of her visit to the region, just on the Bulgarian side of the border. It is an area which, away from the Black Sea coastal resorts, is very little known in the West. But it is steeped in history, going back to Greek myths (which Kassabova frequently calls in aid) and ancient history. Then there is the more recent history: the aftermath of the First World War, which had seen forcible population exchanges of Greeks and Turks; the Second World War as an ally of Nazi Germany, and the country was the base from which in 1941 German troops invaded Greece; communism; the brutal expulsion in 1989 of ethnic Turks (340,000 people, 8% of the population) from Bulgaria, just before communism collapsed; and the capitalist...

United Kingdom on Jul 07, 2019

David Anderson: Visit the ‘doormat of Europe, or Asia’, depending on your direction of travel. The author revisits the borders of her childhood in Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey in a very personal journey that invites all of us along. Conquerors for centuries have used these lands as a route to feast on other civilizations. Highly reminiscent of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s travels through old Europe between the World Wars.

United States on May 07, 2019

M M MacNair: I loved the book and compared to some other modern travel writing I deeply appreciated the tight focus on one little-known region, one mountain range, and the overlapping peoples who inhabit them the borders and their mutations. The author is a poet, and linguistically gifted and the book shows confidence in the way scenes and personalities are managed and woven together. Qualms: she insists she is not a historian - but Wiki would have saved her from regular minor ambiguities or flat errors: eg Ataturk was nothing to do with the Armenian massacres; she seems to confuse Lausanne with Sevres; could have worked a little harder to understand the Orthodox church and the various forms of Islam; why modern Turkish is so different from that of 1918 is actually a helpful part of her story that she has missed; Cathars etc. Also, the stories of refugee suffering are brutal and haunting and well-told but they can be heavy reading when stacked up so unrelentingly.

United Kingdom on Feb 27, 2019

Ryan Murdock: Brilliant. Beautifully written. One of the best books I've read this year.

Kassabova has a poet's eye for landscape, an instinct for finding exactly the right people, and the ability to fade into the background to let their stories shine through, all while shading her journey with her own stories and questions. It's a delicate balance.

She introduces her readers to a fascinating but little-known part of Europe: that strange and often overrun corner where the borders of Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece meet, and where rusting barbed wire and abandoned guard towers are being slowly consumed by forests and mountains that slide into the Black Sea.

But Kassabova doesn't just straddle these physical borders. Her story also straddles the borders of mystery and superstition, and the unexplainable events that can happen in a place as marginal as this.

Highly recommended.

United States on Nov 13, 2018

george anthony eldon: Very readable for the most part; incredibly sobering to a grreat extent. Made me very thankful to be living in the south Pacific. The author, now domiciled in Scotland, made a prolonged exploratiom of the terrain of her origins.. Gave me a good understanding of the basis of a common joke when I was a youth in the UK - viz acquaintance greets one with fake alarm - "Have you heard the news!? --There's trouble in the Balcans!" Yes, right. In the book Kapka meets and bonds with some very interesting, mostly rustic people of various nationalities,both real and forcibly modified, , and almost all living fractured lives under the boot heals of various military, In New Zealand we have a much over used word - resilience - used to extol our earthquake aurvival ability, but really we have nothing on the inhabitants of the border country of the book, who have survived generations of mass upheaval, invulluntary exile, and milittary domination by armies of several nations. So yes, a good book, but I got tired of the superntatural element which was, to me, well, tiresome.

United States on Jan 30, 2018