Border A Journey to the Edge of Europe Kapka Kassabova 9781555977863 Books
Download As PDF : Border A Journey to the Edge of Europe Kapka Kassabova 9781555977863 Books
“Remarkable a book about borders that makes the reader feel sumptuously free.” ―Peter Pomerantsev
In 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 “Red Riviera” 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.
Border A Journey to the Edge of Europe Kapka Kassabova 9781555977863 Books
This read was a fascinating journey indeed! I learned so much, but from the inside, as though I was experiencing the places and events from within the author and the individuals who people her travels and the historical background she provides. The hours I spent on the “borders” were engaged, educational and emotional. I highly recommend this unusual book.Product details
|
Tags : Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe [Kapka Kassabova] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b>“Remarkable: a book about borders that makes the reader feel sumptuously free.” ―Peter Pomerantsev</b> In this extraordinary work of narrative reportage,Kapka Kassabova,Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe,Graywolf Press,1555977863,Essays,Essays & Travelogues,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Personal Memoirs,Borderlands,Borderlands - Bulgaria,Borderlands - Bulgaria - History,Borderlands - Greece,Borderlands - Turkey,Bulgaria,Bulgaria - Description and travel,Bulgaria - History,Bulgaria;Boundaries.,Greece,History,Kassabova, Kapka,Kassabova, Kapka - Travel - Bulgaria,Thrace;History.,Thrace;Social life and customs.,Travel,Travel writing,Turkey,031002 Graywolf TP,Biography & AutobiographyPersonal Memoirs,DESCRIPTION AND TRAVEL,Europe,GENERAL,General Adult,HistoryEurope - General,LITERARY COLLECTIONS Essays,Non-Fiction,Personal Memoirs,TRAVEL Essays & Travelogues,TRAVEL Former Soviet Republics,Thrace;History.,Thrace;Social life and customs.,Travel,Travel writing,TravelFormer Soviet Republics,Turkey,United States,VOYAGES AND TRAVELS,Biography & AutobiographyPersonal Memoirs,HistoryEurope - General,LITERARY COLLECTIONS Essays,Personal Memoirs,TRAVEL Essays & Travelogues,TRAVEL Former Soviet Republics,TravelFormer Soviet Republics,Description And Travel,Voyages And Travels
Border A Journey to the Edge of Europe Kapka Kassabova 9781555977863 Books Reviews
The book is an amazing combination of travel stories, history and folklore. A must read for anyone who lived or traveled to these lands.
Good read.
Personal sharing of author's visit to this orders area with current views of locals and a great tying in of hilstory of the area. Crossing these borders depends on who was in power and how crazy that power was - and who got shot traveliing in which direction.
Excellent book...I read it before going to Bulgaria.
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.
I loved it. Beautifully written, and conveyed all of the suffering this region has endured throughout the centuries because of political, religious and ideological differences. You feel for every character she meets.
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.
This read was a fascinating journey indeed! I learned so much, but from the inside, as though I was experiencing the places and events from within the author and the individuals who people her travels and the historical background she provides. The hours I spent on the “borders” were engaged, educational and emotional. I highly recommend this unusual book.
0 Response to "∎ PDF Border A Journey to the Edge of Europe Kapka Kassabova 9781555977863 Books"
Post a Comment