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Border : a journey to the edge of Europe / Kapka Kassabova.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: Minneapolis, Minnesota : Graywolf Press, 2017.Description: xviii, 379 pages : map ; 21 cmISBN:
  • 9781555977863 :
  • 1555977863
Subject(s): Genre/Form: DDC classification:
  • 949.903 23
Summary: "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."--Amazon.com.
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Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Shelving location Call number Status Notes Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Phillipsburg Free Public Library Adult Non-Fiction Adult Non-Fiction 949.903 KAS Available pap.ed. 36748002422980
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"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.

Includes bibliographical references.

"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."--Amazon.com.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Map (p. xii)
  • Preface (p. xv)
  • Border (p. 1)
  • Mountain of Madness, I (p. 2)
  • Part 1 Starry Strandja
  • Via pontica (p. 7)
  • Red Riviera (p. 8)
  • Strandja (p. 14)
  • The Village in the Valley (p. 17)
  • Agiasma (p. 29)
  • Everything Begins with a Spring (p. 30)
  • Cheshma (p. 43)
  • A Man of Leisure (p. 44)
  • 415 (p. 49)
  • Wire in the Heart (p. 51)
  • Klyon (1961-1990) (p. 55)
  • The Tomb of Bastet (p. 57)
  • Cold water (p. 74)
  • Pilgrims (p. 75)
  • Atonement (p. 81)
  • One Hundred and Twenty Sins (p. 82)
  • Sozialistischen persönlichkeit (p. 87)
  • Riding the Iron Curtain (p. 88)
  • Zmey (p. 107)
  • Ball of Fire (p. 108)
  • Part 2 Thracian Corridors
  • Thrace (p. 121)
  • The Friend with the Pigeons (p. 124)
  • Memleket (p. 137)
  • Girl Between Languages (p. 138)
  • Komshulak (p. 152)
  • To See a Dancing Priest (p. 153)
  • Rosa damascena (p. 164)
  • If You Are True (p. 166)
  • Corridors (p. 175)
  • Everybody Comes to Ali's (p. 176)
  • Via antica (p. 181)
  • Tales from the Bridge (p. 183)
  • Ghosts (p. 190)
  • A Kurdish Love Story (p. 192)
  • The spring of the white-legged maiden (p. 202)
  • The Chicken Shack (p. 204)
  • Part 3 Rhodope Passes
  • Rhodopaca, rhodopaeum, rhodopensis (p. 219)
  • The Village Where You Lived For Ever (p. 222)
  • The judgement (p. 235)
  • On the Road to Freedom (p. 237)
  • Tale of two kingdoms (p. 252)
  • Drama (p. 255)
  • Metaxas line (p. 266)
  • Mountain of Madness, II (p. 269)
  • Agonia (p. 279)
  • Hotel Above the World (p. 281)
  • Ursus arctos (p. 287)
  • Goddess of the Forest (p. 288)
  • Tobacco (p. 298)
  • The Woman Who Walked for a Week (p. 299)
  • Part 4 Starry Strandja
  • Lodos (p. 309)
  • To the River (p. 312)
  • Kaynarca (p. 332)
  • The Monk of Happiness (p. 334)
  • Eternal return (p. 344)
  • The Good Siren (p. 346)
  • Muhhabet (p. 353)
  • The Last Shepherd (p. 355)
  • Uroki (p. 361)
  • How to Lift a Spell (p. 363)
  • Acknowledgements and Sources (p. 377)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Memoirist, poet, and novelist Kassabova (Street Without a Name) offers a sensitive rendition of her trip back to her homeland of Bulgaria. As a child, the borders among Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey symbolized freedom from oppression and escape to Western culture. She gives a meandering description of how the past and present have merged with the event of the Syrian refugee crisis. In all times she describes, borders represent possibility, hope, and despair. Kassabova sympathetically tells the stories of those who live along these borders, whether they are trying to pass them, or to maintain their cultures' long traditions. Turkish and Greek cultures are dreamily explored via archaeology, myth, and history. The stories are mostly those of men; women remain in the background, while Kassabova stands out as an oddity, a woman traveling alone. Corrie James reads the book in a lilting, wistful tone, carrying the listener along through the nonlinear narrative. James's pacing is perfect, as is her palpable confusion and discomfort when faced with long-held chauvinistic and racist beliefs. -VERDICT While lengthy, the production keeps one's attention because of the large cast of unique characters, the information on a little-known part of the world, and the universal theme of migration. Recommended for most collections. [A National Book Critics Circle 2018 nominee.]-B. Allison Gray, Santa Barbara P.L., Goleta Branch, CA © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

In this engrossing travelogue, poet and memoirist Kassabova (Twelve Minutes of Love) returns to her native Bulgaria after 25 years to explore its borders with Turkey and Greece, illuminating the area's often dark history and the lives of the people living in its shadows. Remembering her country as a site of refuge for individuals fleeing Communist East Germany, she interviews a man who was caught, tortured, and imprisoned by the Stasi in 1971. In Strandja she witnesses the ritualistic bathing of religious icons accompanied by bagpipes and fire walkers and chronicles the unbelievable story of a (supposedly) cursed Thracian archaeological site believed to be an "intergalactic portal." Throughout, Kassabova presents the border as a metaphor for the threshold of human callousness: once the line has been crossed into cruelty, there is no returning to the country of innocence. Wild animals abound, myths mingle with reality, and Kassabova proves to be a penetrating and contemplative guide through rough terrain. Agent: Jacqueline Ko, the Wylie Agency. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

As Kassabova travels through the hinterlands of Bulgaria, along the border where that country meets Turkey and Greece, she discovers that borders shape the lives of both those who attempt to cross them and those who live nearby. Kassabova, whose family immigrated from Bulgaria to New Zealand, layers the tale of her travels with insights into the country's Soviet past. Along the way, she meets border guards who have seen people survive the unthinkable, a would-be border crosser who was imprisoned, villagers who maintain their grip on traditions even as their hometowns are withering away, and a wealthy man who once worked for state security and who warns her against asking questions. The lessons of the past are brought starkly to life as she witnesses the trickle of refugees from Syria, before that trickle became a flood. Border offers a dark look at a world of smugglers and spies, where the past maintains its hold even as people struggle to reach a brighter future.--Thoreson, Bridget Copyright 2017 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

A writer who has lived in Scotland for many years chronicles her return to her birthplace to explore the idea and reality of boundaries between nations.Poet and memoirist Kassabova (Twelve Minutes of Love: A Tango Story, 2013, etc.) left Bulgaria with her family when she was a child, eventually settling in the U.K. She returned to the Balkans, where "Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey converge and diverge," to explore tiny, almost-abandoned mountain villages and border points where, in the communist era of her childhood, those who attempted to cross in either direction might be killed. She found a new group of immigrants, from Syria, in the region, trying to get to Greece or Bulgaria but stuck either in camps or trying to make a living as individuals in Turkey. This is far from a conventional travel narrative. The book is as much about Kassabova's emotions and misgivings as the world of the senses, with digressions about dragons, magical springs, ghosts, and the evil eye. A woman traveling by herself in a part of the world where doing so opens her to being perceived as a prostitute, the author met and talked to men while the women stayed hidden. These men, whose real names she alters, are shepherds, ex-spies, Eastern Orthodox priests, smugglers, and former border guards. They told her long, complicated, and possibly true stories. She suspected two, probably drug dealers, of kidnapping her and fled in terror to the safety of three strangers living in "a paradise of lemon balm and fig trees." Telling her story, she includes bits of the layered history of the region, not so systematically that an outsider can piece it all into a coherent narrative but nonetheless studded with flashes of insight. A dreamlike account that subtly draws readers into the author's ambivalent experience of a homeland that has changed almost beyond recognition. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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