'Brave, intense, unexpected, lyrical and troubling' Rory Stewart An extraordinary portrait of the Scottish Highlands: this is an epic and urgent story of destruction and renewal, told through unforgettable encounters with its people. This is the story of a Scottish glen and its inhabitants, and of how I came to call it my glen. From the powerful rivers that bring life and prosperity, to the Pictish cairns, undisturbed for centuries and the meadows of bluebells, from which deer emerge, god-like, in a flash, Kapka Kassabova reveals a world that has been abused, but remains achingly beautiful and alive. In the Highlands, centuries-old connections between the land, nature and people have been, and continue to be, shaken by the forces of colonialism, industry, depopulation and private property speculation. Borrowed Land tells the stories of those who are working against this disconnect: the last true Highlanders, fighting to preserve their home. 'A poetic and haunting anatomy of what happens when a world is addicted to extraction' James Crawford 'Stark and moving. A hymn, a howl and a call to action all at once' Ben Rawlence 'A brilliant, daring and urgent account’ Sally Huband
Author
Kapka Kassabova was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria in the 1970s and 1980s. Her family emigrated to New Zealand just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and she spent her late teens and twenties in New Zealand where she studied French Literature, and published two poetry collections and the Commonwealth-Writers Prize-winner for debut fiction in Asia-Pacific, Reconnaissance. In 2004, Kapka moved to Scotland and published Street Without a Name (Portobello, 2008). It is a story of the last Communist childhood and a journey across post-communist Bulgaria. It was short-listed for the Dolman Travel Book Award. The music memoir Twelve Minutes of Love (Portobello 2011), a tale of Argentine tango, obsession and the search for home, was short-listed for the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards. Villa Pacifica (Alma Books 2011), a novel with an equatorial setting, came out at the same time. Border: a journey to the edge of Europe (2017 Granta/ Greywolf) is an exploration of Europe's remotest border region. Her essays and articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, Vogue, The Sunday Times, The Scottish Review of Books, The NZ Listener, The New Statesman, and 1843 Magazine.
