A geographical mind: In conversation with Kapka Kassabova

The only word that can be used to adequately describe Kapka’s work is ‘mesmerizing.’ The effect either of reading her writing or of listening to her speak is one of being swept into what feels like an alternate dimension, where everything is tinged with a kind of numinosity and wonder.

To experience the vividness of her perspective once is to seek its repeated encounter — and, fortunately for us, it can be found throughout what are currently more than a dozen of her published books and countless interviews. I’m delighted, with our conversation, to have added to this rich collection of transporting exchanges.

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Kapka Kassabova is a multigenre writer of narrative non-fiction, poetry, and fiction. Border, the first book in her Balkan quartet, won a British Academy Prize, the Scottish Book of the Year, the Stanford-Dolman Travel Book of the Year, and the Highland Book Prize. Kassabova grew up in Bulgaria and studied in New Zealand; today, she lives by a river in the Scottish Highlands. Her work has been translated into twenty languages, and she remains literarily bilingual with English being her primary literary language and Bulgarian a close second.

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Song: “Walk Through the Park,” by TrackTribe