Kapka kassabova biography of alberta
The life of the lonely woman suddenly seems different: the precision of the bus routes becomes a way of salvaging sense from senselessness..
Kapka Kassabova
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe
2017 (UK: Granta Books; US: Graywolf Press)
Halfway through her exhilarating narrative of travels through the borderlands of Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, Kapka Kassabova tells the story of the Spring of the White-Legged Maiden, popularized in a nineteenth century poem but dating back much earlier.
The spring is properly speaking a chesma,
“the pan-Balkan roadside drinking fountain where you tie your horse, fill your goatskin with water, slice a watermelon, drop your rubbish in the vicinity of the public bin.
Born in in Sofia, Bulgaria, to scientist parents, she studied at the French Lycee in Sofia.
Born in in Sofia, Bulgaria, to scientist parents, she studied at the French Lycee in Sofia. Born in in Sofia, Bulgaria, Kapka Kassabova is the author of several collections of poetry, novels, and narrative nonfiction books in both Bulgarian and. The life of the lonely woman suddenly seems different: the precision of the bus routes becomes a way of salvaging sense from senselessness. Kapka Kassabova grew up in Sofia, spent her twenties in New Zealand and now lives in the Scottish Highlands. Kapka Kassabova is a poet and prose writer and, most recently, the author of Elixir (), To the Lake () and Border (). … the chesma is hospitality without a host, the Balkans without borders.”
It is the best of the place, in other words. Yet despite the idea of hospitality promised by the chesma—almost but not quite idealized (note the wry observation about the rubbish)—Kassabova recognizes there is no such thing as the Balkans without borders.
And borders, Kassabova warns, are never without menace. They are places “whe