For Bulgaria, I read Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova. Kassabova was born in communist Bulgaria in 1973 and her family emigrated to New Zealand at the end of the Cold War when she was seventeen.
Kassabova now lives in Scotland but felt drawn to explore the borderlands of Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece. During the Cold War, it was rumored that the border shared by Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey was easier to cross than the Berlin Wall. Folks reasoned that traveling through the woods and crossing some barbed wire was easier than Checkpoint Charlie.
Border is a work of narrative nonfiction that is parts travelogue, history, and memoir. Kassabova deftly weaves together her personal journey through the borderlands with the stories of people who tried to cross the border. During the Cold War, we meet East Germans fleeing communism, and in more recent history, we meet refugees desperately seeking asylum in Europe from parts of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. This book made me think so much about country, nationality, and borders, and I’m still grappling with these shifting ideas.
Kassabova brought the woods of Stranja to life, making them seem more haunted and magical than any woods traveled by Goldilocks or Little Red Riding Hood. There are bears and wolves, spies and soldiers, monasteries carved out of rocky hills, and tunnels filled with treasures left by the Thracians. I ache to visit these places, but they are not exactly tourist destinations for Americans. I’m not sure I could ever find half the villages Kassabova visited, and the tourism industry in that part of the world seems to be damaging the woods–so should I even consider going?
[Though seriously, take a moment and Google “rock monastery of Saint Nicholas.” Now don’t you want to come with me to the Balkans?]
While reading this book, I often thought about its parallels to Secondhand Time, my pick for Belarus. Both Kassabova and Alexievich preserve the stories of ordinary people who lived in communist states and who are struggling to find their footing as borders and governments shift and topple. Kassabova, however, was the protagonist of Border whereas Alexievich rarely appeared in Secondhand Time. No approach is better than the other. Both books touched my soul.
I also thought about The Bridge on the Drina, my pick for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Not only are both countries in the Balkans, but both books explore a part of the world where East meets West, where religions clash, where questions of nationality and ethnicity are spicier than I am used to in my American bubble. Kassabova also described literal bridges that reminded me of the bridge in ViĊĦegrad and told stories about the building of these bridges that echoed Ivo Andric’s work.
Both Andric and Alexievich were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kapka Kassabova someday receives that honor as well. I can’t wait to read more of her books.