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Book of the Week

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Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

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Book of the Week: Border - Tales from the Edge of Europe

Indira Varma

Kapka Kassabova

Jill Waters

Book of the Week: Border - Tales from the Edge of Europe: Episode 2

Border - Tales from the Edge of Europe

Episode 2

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Border - Tales from the Edge of Europe, Episode 2

Kapka explores the Bulgaria of her childhood, where people mourn a changed way of life.

In this corner of the Balkans, Kapka Kassabova explores the Bulgaria of her childhood, now peopled with those who mourn a changed way of life and, in some cases, their loved ones.

When Kapka Kassabova was a child, the borderzone between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece was rumoured to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall, so it swarmed with soldiers, spies and fugitives.

On holidays close to the border on the Black Sea coast, she remembers playing on the beach, only miles from where an electrified fence bristled, its barbs pointing inwards toward the enemy - the holiday-makers, the potential escapees. 

Today, this densely forested landscape is no longer heavily militarised, but it is scarred by its past.

Kapka Kassabova sets out on a journey through a hidden corner of the continent and meets the people of this triple border - Bulgarians, Turks, Greeks, indigenous Balkan Muslims and the latest wave of refugees fleeing conflict further afield. She discovers a region that has been shaped by the successive forces of history - by its own past migration crises, by communism, by Nazi occupation, by the Ottoman Empire and - older still - by the ancient legacy of myths and legends. But there seem to be non-human forces at work here too. It is a land rich with curative springs and Thracian tombs; home to psychic healers and Europe's last fire-worshippers. 

As Kapka Kassabova explores this enigmatic region in the company of border guards and treasure hunters, entrepreneurs and botanists, refugees and smugglers, she traces the physical and psychological borders that criss-cross its villages and mountains, and goes in search of the stories that will unlock its secrets.

Written by Kapka Kassabova
Read by Indira Varma

Abridged and produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Kapka Kassabova explores the hinterland where the Iron Curtain met Greece and Turkey.

Kapka Kassabova travels to Bulgaria and explores the mysterious hinterland where the Iron Curtain met Greece and Turkey.

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