Play Audiobook Sample
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe Audiobook
Play Audiobook Sample
(0.00) - 0 listener ratings
Quick Stats About this Audiobook
Total Audiobook Chapters:
Longest Chapter Length:
Shortest Chapter Length:
Average Chapter Length:
Audiobooks by this Author:
Publisher Description
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.
Download and start listening now!
“Rich with a profound sense of the region’s political and cultural history, this travelogue moves at an often meandering pace, its narrative broken up by condensed musings on personal conflict, historical ephemera or folklore…. Kassabova devotes herself to intimate vignettes that sparkle with the dark charm of fairy tales and mystical fables…. Hosts and drivers, fellow travelers and cynical locals provide a constant hum that reinforces the tension of a territory under constant contest.”
— Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Quotes
-
“It’s not surprising that Kassabova―who has written three poetry collections, a novel and three memoirs―demonstrates a descriptive sensitivity on the page…. But she also possesses a gift that’s bestowed on only the best of travel writers: an ability to zero in on characters who illuminate the condition of a place in time.”
— The New York Times Book Review -
“Kassabova’s sense of adventure and spontaneity, combined with a lack of artifice… are winning qualities in a narrator…. Kassabova’s gifts as a poet shine when she describes the mystical, powerful landscape, the book’s true protagonist.”
— Newsday -
“Kassabova is local enough to dig out the details, and at the same time detached enough to see things without judging them. She observes, listens, and narrates without distorting the story with her opinion. She’s a messenger. A very fair one. In the current state of the world’s refugee crisis, Border is a reminder that those who cross the borders are not just numbers. They are people, and bearers of stories that deserve to be heard.”
— The Christian Science Monitor -
“It’s the story of migration, both modern and historical, of boundaries crossed and crossed out, a story as old as the soil itself.”
— Literary Hub
Border Listener Reviews
Be the first to write a review about this audiobook!
About Kapka Kassabova
Kapka Kassabova is the author of three poetry collections, the novel Villa Pacifica, and the acclaimed memoirs Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria and Twelve Minutes of Love: A Tango Story. She lives in Scotland.
About Corrie James
Corrie James has worked on both sides of the Atlantic in theater, radio, and audiobooks. She credits growing up listening to the BBC for her love of the spoken word. Her audiobooks include The Companion of Lady Holmeshire by Debra Brown and Remember Me by Trezza Azzopardi.