Kapka Kassabova

Kapka Kassabova was born and grew up in Sofia, Bulgaria.[1] She studied at the French College in Sofia. After leaving Bulgaria with her family in her late teens, she lived in New Zealand for twelve years where she studied French, Russian and English Literature and Creative Writing at the universities of Otago and Victoria, and published her first books of poetry and fiction. She moved to Scotland in 2005. After a number of years in Edinburgh, she settled in the Highlands of Scotland.[2]

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 2000.

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 book of narrative non-fiction Border: a journey to the edge of Europe was published in the UK, USA and Bulgaria, and is expected to appear in other languages. 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...Smokily intense and quiveringly powerful." [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] Caroline Moorhead in 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] Professor Ash Amin of the British Academy in an award speech described Border as being "about the Eastern reaches of Europe, certainly, but also about the essence of place and the essence of human encounter." The Calvert Journal wrote that Border "reinvents writing about the Balkans."

Border won the 2018 British Academy Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, 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, and the National Book Critics Circle Awards in the USA.

• 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, Auckland University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-8694-0444-4 (at AUP)
• 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
• To the Lake: a Balkan Journey of War and Peace, Granta 2020, ISBN 9781783783977

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• Author's official website
• British Academy Al-Rodhan Prize
• Listen to Kapka Kassabova reading her poetry for the British Library
• British Council author page