#Kapka Kassabova

[michaelbogild]

As an exotic bird I’ve learnt to speak this gentle language of oblivion, of severed names.

Kapka Kassabova

[papillonattrape]

[mariacallous]

do you have any book recommendations on Eastern European history / Ukrainian history and/or current events?

I would also add:

The Language of War by Oleksandy Mykhed

Vatnik Soup: The Ultimate Guide to Russian Disinformation by Pekka Kallioniemi

The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes

I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv by Ilia Ponomarenko

Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence by Yaroslav Trofimov

Russia's War by Jade McGlynn

Nothing is True but Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev (as well as his This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality and How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler)

The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder (as well as his Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin)

Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism by Charles Clover

Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age by Robert Kaplan

Mud Sweeter than Honey: Voices of Communist Albania by Margo Rejmer

The War Came To Us: Life and Death in Ukraine by Christopher Miller

Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability by Michael Kimmage

Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova

Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum (as well as her Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe)

From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe by John Connelly

Not really Eastern Europe (more Central Asia) but Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan by Erika Fatland

Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land by Jacob Mikanowski

Children of the Night: The Strange and Epic Story of Modern Romania by Paul Kenyon

Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel by Anatoly Kuznetsov

Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

[madtomedgar]

books read in august, september, october, and november:

[i had to evacuate my apartment at the end of august and spent the next few months dealing with that plus being sick, so this is a comparatively small amount of books for the timeframe. also not typing out my thoughts about them because that just feels like a lot right now]

August:

Dear Life by Alice Munroe (the fictional equivalent of a still-life painting by a Dutch master. Technically fantastic, evocative, but fairly boring to me personally)

Art and Lies by Jeannette Winterson: Fucking fantastic, everything I love about Winterson. Rambling interiority, plots and characters colliding on multiple planes of reality, jumping the tracks for the author to just go off on tangents, weaving the taboos of queerness with other taboos and interrogating taboo and respectability with viciousness and compassion... yeah. good shit.

To the Lake: A Balkan Journey of War and Peace by Kapka Kassabova: absolutely wonderful book about a part of the world i previously knew nothing about. I found it resonated a lot with Jewish intergenerational trauma. Highly recommend.

The Gone Dead by Channelle Benz: interesting idea, terrible execution. The author clearly put a lot of Tips For Writers into this story.

September:

A Memory called Empire by Arkady Martine: Easily the best sci-fi I've read this year, 10/10

October/November:

Vagabonds by Hao JingFang: interesting premise, very clearly from a very different storytelling tradition than I'm used to. I don't think the plot lived up to the themes.

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates: Excellent and insightful redux of race in the Obama years. Wish he brought more gender analysis to the table, but there are plenty other authors to do that.

[cleverwordsandotherstuffilike]

“You will ache for slow beauty to save you from your quick, quick life.”

Kapka Kassabova, from “The Door” in Clare Morgan’s What Poetry Brings to Business (University of Michigan Press, 2010)

[macontheweb]

tagged by @bishybarnaby. Thank you, my friend!

Last Song: PNAU’s Embrace. On my pre-swim hype playlist.

Last Show: The last show I did a complete rewatch of was Doctor Who (the thirteen era).

Last Movie: probably Glass Onion lol. Before that, it was The Lost King a couple of weeks ago.

Currently Watching: Kaleidoscope. It’s insane. There’s a character from Philly who has the broadest, most unapologetic Australian accent. I can’t take it. I’ve got one more episode to go.

Currently Reading: The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill and Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova. I’m slow with non-fiction so I usually read some fiction at the same time.

Current Obsession: Still chaotic bisexual James Bond, I’m afraid. And my babygirl Blanc.

Tagging : @kun-is-my-daddy @maddysgem @breval @ao3-brihna and whoever else wants to play!

[kommunalka-blog]

EUROPA CENTRO-ORIENTAL. ESCRITORES.

POLONIA

Adam Zagajewski Zbigniew Herbert Wislawa Szymborska Józef Czapski Józef Wittlin Olga Tokarczuk Marek Byenczyc Andrzej Stasiuk Sergiusz Piasecki Ida Fink

REPÚBLICA CHECHA (o CHECOSLOVAQUIA)

Arnost Lustig Jirí Weil

HUNGRÍA

Laszló Krasznahorkai Szilárd Borbély György Spiró Magda Szabó

ROMANIA

Mircea Cărtărescu Ana Blandiana Gabriela Adamesteanu Tatiana Tibuleac

BULGARIA

Angel Wagenstein Georgi Márkov Alek Popov Kapka Kassabova

SERBIA (o JUGOSLAVIA)

Danilo Kis Goran Petrovic David Albahari Dragan Velikić Svetislav Basara Aleksandar Tišma

ESLOVENIA

Maja Haderlap (idioma) Boris Pahor (idioma) Goran Vojnović

CROACIA

Dubravka Ugrešić Daša Drndić Miroslav Krleža

BOSNIA

Ivo Andrić (serbobosnio) Meša Selimović Faruk Šehić Velibor Colić Miljenko Jergović Aleksandar Hemon Saša Stanišić Lana Bastašić (serbobosnia) Selvedin Avdić Teodor Cerić

MONTENEGRO

Mirko Kovač KOSOVO Pajtim Statovci ALBANIA

Ismail Kadaré

UCRANIA

Andréi Kurkov Yuri Andrujovich Serhiy Zhadan

[girlwithouthands]

Kapka Kassabova, interviewed by Jeffery Gleaves for The Paris Review (x)

[margomayi]

[mariacallous]

Have you ever read anything by Kapka Kassabova? I think you would like her

I haven't! But I'm going to look into her work - do you have any recommendations? :D

[perzo-vujita]

Our Names Long and Foreign

for my grandmother’s family in Ohrid, Macedonia

Here they are, inside the album,

they squint in the September sun

of nineteen-fifty-eight,

of nineteen-eighty-four.

On this page, a girl is born,

a piece of dark flesh in a dark time.

Class-room, ribbons in the hair.

On this page, she is across the border to get married,

and be lonely and homesick,

and eat from despair.

Here, her brother gets divorced,

the second cousin’s crowned

the town’s beauty and has twins,

the other brother comes back from the war

and almost drowns in the Ohrid lake,

but the pages are mixed up,

this war should come before the rest.

Here, the twins without a mother.

The beautiful go first, and then the good.

And then the other way.

It’s hard to say, the ink of years

is smudged like tears from nineteen-twenty-four.

Here, borders lift, the family meet

after seven years. Nervous smiles.

Their shadows stretch across the pier,

beach, veranda, cypress, pine.

The Ohrid lake has no reflections,

the babies are anonymous,

the children mute with secrets,

the adults in a slow decline.

They wave, they smile,

they’re happy, but they feel

there’s something on the other side

behind the camera.

No matter how much flesh

and hope they throw at it,

it gets them in the end,

them and their children who smile

in black and white, then colour,

then I’m in the picture too.

Hello! we call out one last time

from the shadow of September,

and trip into unmarked containers

stacked in silent Balkan rooms,

our ink smudged,

our names long and foreign

in the mouths of the unborn.

[dk-thrive]

You will ache for slow beauty to save you from your quick, quick life.

Kapka Kassabova, from “The Door,” Clare Morgan’s What Poetry Brings to Business (University of Michigan Press, 2010)

[mmepastel]

https://youtu.be/gMzAPZaIvWo

J’ai aussi commencé ce livre, étrange, inhabituel, envoûtant mais difficile.

L’auteure, d’origine bulgare mais ayant vécu la majeure partie de son existence en Ecosse, retourne explorer l’étonnante triple frontière (bulgare, turque et grecque) de son enfance. Géographie intime et collective se mêlent. C’est très intéressant. L’écriture est belle. J’apprends des choses..

[thesparhawke]

“It’s precisely when you have lost your roots that everywhere you go matters hugely.”

-Kapka Kassabova, Border Journey to the Edge of Europe

[lydiardbell]

-Kapka Kassabova, from Someone Else's Life