After years on the outside, Bulgaria has finally made it into the EU club, but beyond the cliches about undrinkable plonk, cheap property, and assassins with poison-tipped umbrellas, the country remains a largely unknown quantity. Born on the muddy outskirts of Sofia, Kapka Kassabova grew up under Communism, got away just as soon as she could, and has loved and hated her homeland in equal measure ever since. In this illuminating and entertaining memoir, Kapka revisits Bulgaria and her own muddled relationship to it, travelling back to the scenes of her childhood, sampling its bizarre tourist sites, uncovering its centuries' old history of bloodshed and blurred borders, and capturing the absurdities and idiosyncrasies of her own and her country's past.

About the Author

Kapka Kassabova was born and raised in Sofia. In 1990 her family moved to Britain, and later emigrated to New Zealand. Kapka is already an award-winning writer, and has published four books of poetry and two novels - her travel writing has twice won the New Zealand Cathay Pacific travel writer of the year award. This is her first non-fiction book, which she wrote in her current home-town of Edinburgh.