'A marvellous book about a magical part of the world... It shows more starkly than anything else I have read what the border did to the people who lives along it, and how its legacy endures... Kassabova, a poet, writes lyrically and effectively about the astonishing natural beauty of much of the area... as [she] arcs across countries and centuries in an effort to free herself from the enchantment of this strangest of regions. In the end she leaves, but the spell remains' -- Book of the Week, Guardian

'Like a sharp-eyed magpie, [Kassabova's] travels across the border in this place with three alphabets, picking up intriguing titbits of history and folklore... With a lightness of touch, [...] the tragedies, ironies and curiosities of this often-overlooked corner of Europe, with hotchpotch of peoples, are captured by Kassabova's vivid phrasings' -- The Times

'This smokily intense and quiveringly powerful travel book is about the wild, forested and tragic borderland between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. Kassabova [...] has the travel-writer's core skill of acute sensitivity to her physical environment, together with a poet's turn of phrase and a poet's emotional rawness... Kassabova is, above all, sensationally good at meeting extraordinary people, and that is surely the travel writer's essential skill... [Border] is aromatic, lyrical, disturbing - and very, very fine' -- Sunday Times

'[Kassabova] has an old-fashioned gift for storytelling... Border brilliantly reveals the effects of a millennium of kaleidoscopic shifting. Thoughtful and impressive' -- Observer

'With the deft touch of a historian, she connects the voices of those who have struggled to cross borders across the centuries... Kassabova is a poet, and her writing is beautiful - moving and witty by turns... In a world ever more divided, ever more threatened by Mexican walls, restrictive new passports and fear of the unknown, we need books like this' -- Financial Times

'[Kassabova] segues seamlessly between myth and history, memoir and reportage. Border is a great [travel book]. But it's more than that: it's a big-hearted book for what seems an increasingly mean-spirited age. It spells out the human consequences of nationalism and totalitarianism; of a narrow focus on identity and ethnicity; of divisions and fences and walls designed to keep 'them' from 'us'' -- Daily Telegraph

'Kapka Kassabova's poignant, erudite and witty third book, Border, brings hidden history vividly to light... She treads lightly but distinctly through the stories she tells, displaying an enviable mixture of rapport with her subjects and detachment from their peculiarities... It's a 'melancholy miracle', writes Ms Kassabova, that 'odd ragged bits of this once-rich human tapestry' survive. They could have no better chronicler' -- Economist

'[Kassabova's] hunger and fascination with this little known region has resulted in Border, one of those books that elevates travel writing to art... Mystery, of course, is at the heart of her book. The mystery of marginal points and marginal people' -- Herald

'[A] timely and moving book... Her writing powerfully weaves history, folklore, reportage and personal reflections... Border is illuminating, passionate and sometimes funny. It brilliantly ventriloquises the voice of this mysterious, often plundered part of Europe, revealing the ironies of nationalism and the profound way in which ethnicity and displacement can affect the human psyche' -- Country Life

'A brilliantly diverse and skillful writer... [Kassabova's] narrative nonfiction is renowned... Fascinating' -- Big Issue

'This exceptional book about a journey though Bulgaria's dark, often magical borderlands is every bit as the travel writing of Patrick Leigh Fermor' -- Sunday Times, Top Five Non-Fiction Books for Summer

'She picks up intriguing bits about folklore, history and modern living [and] has a light touch... Vividly written' -- Summer Must-Reads, The Times

'[A] remarkable personal exploration of the borderland between Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey. The Bulgarian-born poet converses with strangers -- guards, treasure-hunters, botanists, refugees, smugglers -- to release unusual, vivid, poignant human stories. She comes to it with a poet's sensibility and a journalist's curiosity. A wonderful, luminous combination' -- New Internationalist

'Kapka Kassabova writes with such energy and style that you feel she could visit the dullest place on earth and make it burst into life. But she has found somewhere extraordinary, the borderland between Greece and Bulgaria and Turkey - one of history's well-worn playgrounds. The individual stories she tells - by turns dramatic and poignant, tragic and comic - are played against a ceaseless round of brutal wars and shifting empires. Border is a brilliant and hugely satisfying book' -- Philip Marsden

'[Kassabova] has achieved something remarkable: a book about borders which 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' -- Peter Pomerentsev

'Like the places it describes, the book holds you in a kind of mysterious electrical charge. It hums with the mystery, superstition, and terrible beauty of a place crushed between man-made borders but also defiantly announcing its sacred otherness. I can't stop thinking about it' -- Frances Stonor Saunders

'The literature of place is crying out for a talent as magical, brilliant and original as Kapka Kassabova's. She writes with taut intelligence and poetic intensity, a shrewd and grown-up worldliness and a rapt sense of all that isn't in the world, a combination that I've been looking this entire century.When Border arrived in my life, I felt as if I'd been struck by lightning' -- Pico Iyer

'This is a dazzling work of art and reportage, an iridescent book, glittering with stories of horror, comedy and actual magic. Kassabova is a brilliant traveller, an astonishing interviewer and writer with a near clairvoyant understanding of the real lives of man and women. In Border, she follows some fierce, sorcerous current which carries us all towards frontiers: there is an urgent and engrossing story here' -- Horatio Clare

'In Kassabova's study these tragic borderlands are brought to life with poetic grace, and her interaction with their inhabitants confers a haunting power on her journey' --Colin Thubron

'Kassabova writes beautifully about the millions of refugees exchanged between Greece and Turkey' -- Prospect Magazine

'An extraordinary book... There are moments of dynamism and hope in these pages... It's to be hoped that Kassabova, with her glorious prose and open heart, always takes care but never abandons the quest [of storytelling]' -- Geographical Review

'Passionately lived... [Kassabova's] descriptions of place are lyrical and gorgeous... it's her encounters with people which bring the book to life... She lets the echoes in the stories she hears tell a wider story' -- Literary Review

'Written with compassion and intelligence, the prose here is as clear and fresh as a mountain stream. This is a timely and important book, and I can't recommend it highly enough' -- Big Issue

'An exceptional travel book that's every bit as good as the writing of Patrick Leigh Fermor' -- Sunday Times

'An accomplished poet and polyglot, [Kassabova] writes exquisite prose, dripping with scorn for the politicians whose bone-headed rules and careless greed despoil the land ad ruin the lives of those who still live there' -- 1843 Magazine

'Kapka Kassabova is a modern Scheherazade - a dazzling writer who tells stories as if her life depended on it... As this wonderful book goes on, a kind of deep background music begins to be heard: themes and images which recur and weave all the voices into a pattern... Spell binding' -- Scottish Review of Books