This is a very fine travelogue of the region mediating Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece. Mountains and a plain. Covering the movement of whole populations of exiles moved back snd forth by war and conquest, religion, language, political leanings, and culture.

It takes back to the Thracian tribes who predated Communists, Fascists, Greek, Roman, and Persian conquests. ( )

Капка Кассабова посетила натуральный медвежий угол Европы, пограничье Болгарии, Греции и Турции. Интересное, но несколько деморализирующее чтение о людях и землях, где почти ничего хорошего никогда не происходило, точно не происходит, и судя по всему не произойдет. И тем не менее бестселлер продаж.

Description of the book from the Preface: “This book tells the human story of the last border of Europe. It is where Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey converge and diverge, borders being what they are. It is also where something like Europe begins and something else ends which isn’t quite Asia” Preface xv

“The journey I describe here is circular and follows the contours of natural realms within the the border zone. I started on the Black Sea at the edge of the enigmatic Strandja ranges where Meditranean and Balkan currents meet; descended west into the border plains of Thrace with its corridors of traffic and trad; entered the passes of the Rhodope Mountains where every peak is legend and every village is not what it seems and ended on the mirror side of the beginning – Strandja and the Black Sea.” Xviii

Born in Bulgaria and having spent her childhood there, author Kapka Kassabova returned to Bulgaria twenty five years after leaving.

She especially was interested in exploring the border regions which were completely off limits during her childhood during the Cold War. Now, instead of Soviets jealously guarding their citizens from leaving Soviet territory with watchtowers and machine guns, the borders are much more lightly patrolled, although there are still guards to catch those refugees traveling through Bulgaria trying to sneak into in to Greece thus into Europe.

I was very glad for the map at the front of the book as I have no knowledge of this region. Nevertheless, as she traveled, even the map could not keep me totally oriented. By following a specific route instead of a given era, I would find chapters with Roman ruins, the ancient alleged burial place of the goddess Bastet and stories of cold war deaths cheek by jowl with even more ancient practices as well as stories of and by current inhabitants.

I learned a bit of Bulgarian history and geography as well as a bit about the people living there past and
present, so I would call it a successful travelogue in those respects. However, something about the writing and mixed eras made it hard for me to see the enchantment of the region and easy for me to put down.

3 stars - enjoyed it, good but not spectacular ( )

During Kapka Kassabova's childhood, Bulgaria's southern border was part of the Iron Curtain, a mysterious and deadly zone, out of bounds to everyone except border guards and a few specially vetted and supervised shepherds and foresters, a place where desperate East Germans would make futile attempts to escape to the West under the pretext of beach holidays by the Black Sea. Now it's the southern frontier of the European Union, the point where desperate people from countries like Syria are trying to get in.

Kassabova returns to the region to explore this border, from both sides, visiting the Strandja mountains on the Black Sea coast, the Rhodope mountains in the west, and the Thracian plain around Edirne (Adrianople) in between the two. This isn't the kind of travel book that has a lot of actual travel in it, though: she is more interested in people and their stories than in scenery or buildings, so she takes the time to stay where she is, sit in cafés, and let the locals come and talk to her. She finds out about local practices and beliefs that seem to go back a long way before Christianity and Islam (firewalking, divination, sacred springs, etc.), about smugglers, treasure-hunters and former border guards, about the region's many minority groups, and about the uncountable individual human tragedies that go with the "bigger historical picture", from the pre-WWI Balkan Wars and the Treaty of Lausanne right through to Bulgaria's forced de-islamisation programme of the late eighties and the Syrian refugee crisis that was at its height while she was researching this book.

Fascinating, and very engaging writing. The tone and emphasis are quite different, but there was a lot of overlap of interest and sympathies that made me think of Paddy Leigh Fermor's Roumeli. ( )

I thought this was exquisite. Then again I am most interested in borders and liminal spaces, regular people, and consequences over time. I would never class this as a travelogue, just a narrative that happens to take place during a journey. Highly recommended if you know your own tastes and how much they overlap with mine. ( )