Writings of here and there

Author Kapka Kassabova moved to New Zealand from Bulgaria in 1992 at the age of 17 “having suffered the full experience of ‘Socialism with a Human Face’ that was the notional premise behind the Bulgarian government: a family of four living in two rooms in a modern yet decaying block, in a street with, as Kassabova says, no name.” In her latest book, Street Without a Name, which is reviewed in the Guardian, she reports of a trip back to Bulgaria after living in New Zealand and Scotland, where she now resides. “It is a beautifully structured book: its closing pages take you back to the beginning, by which time you will know and feel for Bulgaria much more deeply than you did when you started. The country, you will learn, seems to have turned up remarkable women regularly during its history; it strikes me that, in her quiet way, Kapka Kassabova, 36, could be one of them.” Kassabova’s first novel Reconnaissance (1999) was short-listed for the fiction section of the 1999 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and won the Best First Book award in the South East Asia and South Pacific section of the 2000 Commonwealth Writers Prize.