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STREET WITHOUT A NAME
Non-Fiction (Memoir) 352 pages
Portobello Books - July 2008
Shortlisted for the European Book Award 2009
Shortlisted for Authors' Club Dolman Best Travel Book Award 2009
'An unusual and genre-bending book...at once poignant, funny and revealing.' -- Jan Morris, Critics’ Choice of Books of the Year, The Financial Times
‘Not many books on the travel shelves have the force of revelation, but this one does…She leads us into a country most of us have hardly read about with an elegant assurance, an acid wit and a heart-rending precision that can make you see the world quite differently. This book is a treasure.’ -- Pico Iyer
An irreverent and revealing personal portrait of a little-known country, perched on the Eastern edge of Europe. After decades on the outside, Bulgaria has finally made it into the EU. In this darkly comic and unflinchingly honest memoir, Kapka Kassabova revisits Bulgaria and her own muddled relationship to it, travelling back to the surreal scenes of her childhood, sampling its bizarre tourist sites, uncovering centuries' old history of bloodshed and blurred borders, and trying to understand the absurdities and idiosyncrasies of her own and her country's past.
Biography
Born in Bulgaria, Kapka learned to speak English at sixteen when her parents emigrated to New Zealand. She now lives in Edinburgh.
'If her finely pitched lyricism is the first thing that strikes you, the second is the richness of sympathy that lies behind it. She has already established a unique literary identity.'
--Clive James
Award-winning travel writer and author of two novels with Penguin New Zealand: LOVE IN THE LAND OF MIDAS (2000) and RECONNAISSANCE (1999, Japanese and Hebrew rights sold, Commonwealth writers' prize for best first novel, Asia-Pacific region), three poetry collections (Bloodaxe and Auckland University Press) and several travel guides.
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Related news
- Portobello acquire Kassabova’s tango memoir
- STREET WITHOUT A NAME shortlisted for European Book Award 2009.
- STREET WITHOUT A NAME shortlisted for Authors’ Club Dolman Best Travel Book Award 2009.
- STREET WITHOUT A NAME is Guardian Paperback of the Week
- STREET WITHOUT A NAME – a Book of the Year
- Kapka Kassabova's Bulgarian memoir STREET WITHOUT A NAME: English language rights sold
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