{"product_id":"border-a-journey-to-the-edge-of-europe-9781555977863","title":"Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Remarkable: a book about borders that makes the reader feel sumptuously free.\" --Peter Pomerantsev\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this extraordinary work of narrative reportage, Kapka Kassabova returns to Bulgaria, from where she emigrated as a girl twenty-five years previously, to explore the border it shares with Turkey and Greece. When she was a child, the border zone was rumored to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall, and it swarmed with soldiers and spies. On holidays in the \"Red Riviera\" on the Black Sea, she remembers playing on the beach only miles from a bristling electrified fence whose barbs pointed inward toward the enemy: the citizens of the totalitarian regime.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKassabova discovers a place that has been shaped by successive forces of history: the Soviet and Ottoman empires, and, older still, myth and legend. Her exquisite portraits of fire walkers, smugglers, treasure hunters, botanists, and border guards populate the book. There are also the ragged men and women who have walked across Turkey from Syria and Iraq. But there seem to be nonhuman forces at work here too: This densely forested landscape is rich with curative springs and Thracian tombs, and the tug of the ancient world, of circular time and animism, is never far off.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBorder \u003c\/i\u003eis a scintillating, immersive travel narrative that is also a shadow history of the Cold War, a sideways look at the migration crisis troubling Europe, and a deep, witchy descent into interior and exterior geographies.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Graywolf Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 09\/05\/2017\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781555977863\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 400\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.10lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.20h x 5.50w x 1.10d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 05\/22\/2017\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e 07\/01\/2017 pg. 12\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e 07\/15\/2017\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Kapka Kassabova","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":36659649937564,"sku":"9781555977863","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_ce703bcf-f655-422d-a08d-6881eecd8591.jpg?v=1603895202","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/border-a-journey-to-the-edge-of-europe-9781555977863","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}