Kapka Kassabova

Kapka Kassabova
Native name Капка Касабова
Born 1973

Kapka Kassabova (born 1973, in Bulgarian Капка Касабова) is a poet and writer of travel, history, and fiction.

Life

Kassabova was raised in Sofia, Bulgaria.[1] After leaving Bulgaria with her family as a teenager, she lived in New Zealand for a number of years where she studied French, Russian and English Literature and published her first poetry and fiction, before moving to Scotland in 2005. After a number of years in Edinburgh, she moved to the Highlands of Scotland.[2]

Career

Her debut poetry collection All roads lead to the sea won a NZ Montana Book Award and her debut novel Reconnaissance won a Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Asia Pacific. In 2008, Kassabova published the memoir Street Without a Name which was shortlisted for the Dolmann Club Travel Book Award and which Misha Glenny in The Guardian called a "profound meditation on the depth of change triggered by the events of 1989 throughout eastern Europe".[3] Scotland on Sunday described it as "A memorable piece of acutely observed writing where events are relayed with a novelist’s eye. With its sharply humorous details of close family life and the evocative and sometimes almost spiritual portrayal of an era lost and a country changed forever, this book recalls the writings of Isabel Allende".[4]

Kassabova's tango biography Twelve Minutes of Love (2011), was shortlisted for the Scottish Book Awards and hailed by The Independent as "an exquisitely crafted blend of travelogue, memoir, dance history, and some seriously good writing on the human condition." [5] The Scotsman's reviewer wrote that "Kassabova is that rare thing, an author who excels in every genre".[6] and the New Zealand Listener wrote that ‘Kassabova’s poetry explores exile, disconnection and loss; her novels and travel writing are rich in insight, conjuring unsettling worlds. She brings these elements together in this exhilarating account of tango’s addictive character. With a neat twist, she ultimately exposes its illusions, locating its place in a journey that is both personal and universal.’[7]

In 2017, her work of narrative non-fiction Border: a journey to the edge of Europe was published in the UK. A "brave and moving study of the tragic borderland between Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey",[8] it has been described in The Sunday Times as "an exceptional book about Bulgaria's dark, often magical borderlands...Not an easy book. But it is aromatic, lyrical, disturbing - and very very fine." [9] by Peter Pomerantsev as "a book about borders that makes the reader feel sumptuously free, an effect achieved by the way she moves between literary borders so gracefully: travelogue and existential drama; political history and poetry'. Mark Mazower described it in The Guardian as "a marvellous book about a magical part of the world",[10] "mystery... is at the heart of the book; the mystery of marginal points and marginal people" [11] The Economist described it as "witty, poignant, and erudite", "brings hidden history vividly to light".[12] The New Statesman greeted is as "a timely, powerful story of immigration, friendship and travel", "an exceptional book, a tale of travelling and listening closely, and it brings something altogether new to the mounting literature on the story of modern migration".[13]

Border won the 2018 Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year[14] and the 2017 Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year, and won the inaugural Highland Book Prize in 2018. It was shortlisted in the UK for the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, the Gordon Burns Prize, the Bread and Roses Award for radical publishing, and the National Book Critics Circle Awards in the USA.

Books

  • All Roads Lead to the Sea, Auckland University Press 1997 ISBN 1869405285, OCLC 957262995
  • Reconnaissance, Penguin NZ 1999
  • Love in the land of Midas, London: Penguin, 2001, ISBN 9780141000121, OCLC 45339588
  • Someone Else's Life, Bloodaxe 2003
  • Marti Friedlander by Leonard Bell, Introduction, AUP 2009
  • Geography for the Lost, Bloodaxe 2007
  • Street Without a Name, Portobello 2008
  • Villa Pacifica, Penguin NZ/ Alma Books 2011, ISBN 9781846881862, OCLC 779245751
  • Twelve Minutes of Love: a tango story, Portobello 2011, ISBN 9781846272851, OCLC 784580894
  • Border: a journey to the edge of Europe, Granta 2017/ Greywolf 2017, ISBN 9781783782147, OCLC 973023241

References

  1. ↑ "New Zealand Book Council". Archived from the original on 5 July 2008. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  2. ↑ "Kapka Kassabova's website". Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  3. ↑ Glenny, Misha (4 July 2008). "Review: Street Without a Name by Kapka Kassabova". Retrieved 21 November 2017 – via www.theguardian.com.
  4. ↑ Scotland on Sunday
  5. ↑ "Twelve Minutes of Love: A Tango Story, By Kapka Kassabova". 6 November 2011. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  6. ↑ "Scotsman". Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  7. ↑ [The NZ Listener]
  8. ↑ "Country B&B: York House Tetbury - Country Life". 10 April 2012. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  9. ↑ "Page not found - The Times & The Sunday Times". Retrieved 21 November 2017 – via www.thetimes.co.uk.
  10. ↑ "Guardian". Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  11. ↑ "Scotland Herald". Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  12. ↑ "Mapping history". 11 February 2017. Retrieved 21 November 2017 – via The Economist.
  13. ↑ "Statesman". Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  14. ↑ "Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2018 winners". Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. February 1, 2018. Retrieved August 11, 2018.
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