First published 2017
Kapka Kassabova travels back to Bulgaria twenty-five years after emigrating as a child. She investigates the frontier zones where her homeland meets Turkey and Greece. During her childhood, this border region buzzed with soldiers and spies, rumored to offer easier passage to the West than the Berlin Wall itself. She recalls family vacations along the Black Sea's "Red Riviera," where she played on beaches near electrified fences designed to keep citizens trapped inside the totalitarian state. Kassabova encounters fire walkers, smugglers, treasure hunters, botanists, and border guards who inhabit this liminal space. She meets desperate refugees who have crossed from Syria and Iraq through Turkey. The densely wooded terrain holds curative springs and ancient Thracian burial sites. Soviet and Ottoman empires left their marks here, but older forces of myth and legend persist. The landscape pulses with animism and circular time. Kassabova weaves together Cold War shadow history, contemporary migration struggles, and the mysterious pull of ancient geographies.
Genres: history, travel, adventure, non-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, fish-out-of-water, travelogue
Setting: Black Sea, Bulgaria, Europe, Greece, Syria, Thrace, Turkey
Period: Cold War, Ottoman Empire, Soviet Union
400 pages · Paperback · Graywolf Press