Kapka Kassabova, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe,
Minnesota: Graywolf: 2017, 379 p., ISBN: 978-1-55597-786-3
Krishnendra Meena
With the critical turn in Border Studies, varying/differing perspectives on the border havegained salience.1 Everydayness of the border has been emphasized with narratives from borderlanders
and its vernacularization through the impact of border on the quotidian. Vernacularization reflects upon
the language of the border and its effect on the various meanings that the border acquires for theinhabitants close to the border.2 In Kapka Kassabova’s book with the title, Border, the border attains
plurality with the intricate entanglement of experiences at the tri-border of Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.
Kassabova’s early life was spent in this border region with a peculiar geography of the three intersecting
mountain ranges of the Strandja, which extends over the border between Bulgaria and Turkey, theRhodope extends over the border between Bulgaria and Greece and the Balkan Range blankets southern
Bulgaria. Kassabova’s stories are located in this mountainous terrain.
The author’s personal linkages lead her to be involved with the locals. She argues, “Once neara border, it is impossible not to be involved, not to want to exorcise or transgress something. Just by
being there, the border is an invitation.”3 She engages the reader through stories of transgression andinvolvement. Her genre can be identified as a travelogue as she crisscrosses the three borders, i.e.
between Bulgaria and Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey and Turkey and Greece. The narratives/stories havea personal tone to them as she interacts with the borderlanders. She ventures deep into the lives of thepeople she comes across to understand the impact of the border.
The book revolves around “Europe’s southernmost Iron Curtain, a forested Berlin Walldarkened by the armies of three countries. It was deadly, and it remains prickly with dread to this day.”4
In the present circumstance, the Greek-Bulgarian border is softened by shared membership of theEuropean Union whereas the Turkish-Greek and the Turkish Bulgarian border are being hardened inresponse to the steady influx of the refugees from the Middle-East.5 Occasionally ancient history of theregion is invoked with references to the Greek and Roman Empire and to the Ottoman Empire. Thecommon cultural strands of the region are explained through the mythology. Hence, the book presents
 Krishnendra Meena is Assistant Professor of School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He

can be contacted at: meena.krishnendra@gmail.com
1 Chris Rumford, “Towards a Multiperspectival Study of Borders,” Geopolitics 17: 4 (2012): 887–902; CoreyJohnson, Reece Jones, Anssi Paasi, Louise Amoore, Alison Mountz, Mark Salter, and Chris Rumford,“Interventions on Rethinking ‘the Border’ in Border Studies,” Political Geography 30: 2 (2011): 61–69; Reece
Jones and Corey Johnson, eds., Placing the Border in Everyday Life (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014).
2 Anthony Cooper, Chris Perkins and Chris Rumford, “The Vernacularization of Borders” in Placing the Borderin Everyday Life.
3 Kapka Kassabova, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe (Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2017), xv.
4 Ibid., xvi–xvii.
5 Ibid., xvii.
DOI: 10.14943/ebr.9.1.131

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Eurasia Border Review < Book Review >an exposition of the lives of the borderlanders with geo-history. However, the most prominentstories/narratives revolve around the Iron Curtain, its related geopolitics and the innumerable attempts
to cross it and the failures and the casualties.
The chapters are uniquely titled with either a person’s traits or a characteristic of a particularvillage or location. Every chapter is preceded by a prelude to the central theme of the chapter, forexample, sozialistischen persönlichkeit is preceded by the chapter ‘Riding the Iron Curtain’ and ursus
arctos by “Goddess of the Forest.” Every story has a central character, typically impacted by the border.
The stories range from people who have been border guards to men who have been people
smugglers, to people who have lost their close relatives while crossing the border and refugees. There
are people who have been displaced due to their religious affiliations, uprooting them from theirtraditional livelihoods. For some of them the border is a constant hindrance and for some it is a line tobe crossed. For others life depends on crossing the border illegally through ancient routes. The stories
are seeped in mythology, Cold War and local bonhomie that has existed between the Turks, Greeks andthe Bulgarians under the shadow of various political dispositions.
Instructive is the story of a Turkish couple, of Bulgarian Muslims, who were ousted fromBulgaria at the end of the Cold War. The dilemma for Ahmed, from the couple, is, “Even if in Bulgaria,
they call me a Turk, and in Turkey they call me a Bulgarian. What am I, tell me.”6 The border impacts
the identity of person where he is rooted more to culture rather than the geopolitical state. The region
under discussion in the book is also a gateway to Europe for the affected people of the most volatileand conflict-ridden region in the world i.e. West Asia.
Recently the volume of migrants from West Asia to Europe has increased due to conflicts inIraq and Syria and has led to major policy decisions in European nations as well from the EuropeanUnion. Ziko, a Greek and a former human-trafficker, who transported refugees, to Bulgaria via theancient and treacherous routes in the Strandja for a fee, makes for a peculiar character. The author
relives the fear she felt while crossing the border with Ziko and argues that one can perhaps imagine
the dread felt by the migrants/ refugees, when they are forced from their homelands due to persecution
or to escape conflict and arrive in alien lands.
Emel, a Turkish bureaucrat, who visits the Bulgarian town of Svilengrad from Edirne, ahistorical Turkish city regularly, experiences the border differently. Her journeys to Svilengrad arepersonal and are meant for leisure. In a statement, reflective of the privileged attitude towards thegeopolitical phenomena of border she says, “The only good thing about a border is that you can crossit.”7 For her, crossing the border may be mundane and routine, but there is a sense that borders only
cause separation and are divisive, in her statement.
The book has implications for border research, since it brings out the impact of border on
multiple actors and thereby complementing the academic idea of Ubiquity of borders (Balibar)

6 Ibid., 139
7 Ibid., 127132

Krishnendra Meena

Language of Borders (Passi) and Multiperspectivalism (Rumford).8 In terms of the presence of theborder and its multiple meanings Balibar’s polysemic understanding of borders is relevant as various
actors cognize the border with their own lens. The book may contribute to the narrative form tounderstand borders and the narration foregrounds the involvement of the author. Her approach can beconstrued as participatory method. The book highlights the issues faced at the borders in general.

8 Etienne Balibar, Politics and the Other Scene (London: Verso, 2002); Anssi Paasi, Territories, Boundaries andConsciousness: The Changing Geographies of the Finnish-Russian Border (Chichester: John Wiley, 1996);
Rumford, “Multiperspectival Study.”

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