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To the Lake: A Balkan Journey of War and Peace
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76/99
Critics
48/99
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Scholars
75/99
Rating
77/99
Volume
61/99
Rating
36/99
Volume
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About This Book
The celebrated author of Border explores a mysterious, ancient, and little-understood corner of EuropeLake Ohrid and Lake Prespa. Two ancient lakes joined by underground rivers. Two lakes that seem to hold both the turbulent memories of the region's past and the secret of its enduring allure. Two lakes that have played a central role in Kapka Kassabova's maternal family. As she journeys to her grandmother's place of origin, Kassabova encounters a historic crossroads. The lakes are set within the mountainous borderlands of North Macedonia, Albania, and Greece, and crowned by the old Via Egnatia, which once connected Rome to Constantinople. A former trading and spiritual nexus of the southern Balkans, this lake region remains one of Eurasia's most diverse corners. Meanwhile, with their remote rock churches, changeable currents, and large population of migratory birds, the lakes live in their own time. By exploring on water and land the stories of poets, fishermen, and caretakers, misfits, rulers, and inheritors of war and exile, Kassabova uncovers the human destinies shaped by the lakes. Setting out to resolve her own ancestral legacy, Kassabova locates a deeper inquiry into how geography and politics imprint themselves upon families and nations, one that confronts her with universal questions about human suffering and the capacity for change.
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Reviews
"To the Lake is an exquisitely written rallying cry to embrace the notion that the people of the Balkans — and indeed humanity as a whole — have more in common than what divides them, despite generations of strife suggesting otherwise."
"To the Lake is more languid and more patient, as fluid and inexorable as the underground watercourses that connect the two lakes."
"In lyrical, radiant prose, the author recounts her journey to the lakes in a quest to understand the historical forces that shaped her family and her sense of self and to seek 'continuity of being through continuity of place' ..."
"Bulgarian-born poet Kassabova...explores the religious, political, and ethnic tangles of the Balkans in this potent and meditative travelogue steeped in family history ..."
"The sweeping statements and capital-Q questions are par for the course, but where Kassabova's book shines is in the casual precision of the author's own observations."
"Nonetheless, you can't help feeling as she persuades ordinary people to tell their extraordinary stories that she sets her radar to pick up anything that sounds remotely bleak or sinister ..."
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