Borrowed Land

by Kapka Kassabova, Unknown Author

Hardcover

About the author

Kapka Kassabova was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria in the 1970s and 1980s. Her family emigrated to New Zealand just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and she spent her late teens and twenties in New Zealand where she studied French Literature, and published two poetry collections and the Commonwealth-Writers Prize-winner for debut fiction in Asia-Pacific, Reconnaissance.

In 2004, Kapka moved to Scotland and published Street Without a Name (Portobello, 2008). It is a story of the last Communist childhood and a journey across post-communist Bulgaria. It was short-listed for the Dolman Travel Book Award.

The music memoir Twelve Minutes of Love (Portobello 2011), a tale of Argentine tango, obsession and the search for home, was short-listed for the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards.

Villa Pacifica (Alma Books 2011), a novel with an equatorial setting, came out at the same time.

Border: a journey to the edge of Europe (2017 Granta/ Greywolf) is an exploration of Europe's remotest border region.

Her essays and articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, Vogue, The Sunday Times, The Scottish Review of Books, The NZ Listener, The New Statesman, and 1843 Magazine.

Reviews

[David Edmonds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautively written and a joy to read the book tells of the environmental and community cost to North Scotland of long term development of hyrdro electric power and more recently windfarms with little benefit locally. The final chapters describe some hope that the tide is turning and the need for balance is being recognised.