Our Book of the Month for February 2023 is Elixir by the former Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards winning writer Kapka Kassabova.
An exceptional work of narrative non-fiction by a prizewinning writer, Elixir is an exploration of place, people, plants, and a urgent call to rethink how we live. A search for a cure to what ails us in the Anthropocene, from the award-winning author of Border.
“In her captivating latest, Kassabova transports us to the Mesta River in her native Bulgaria … Kassabova finds hope that this ancient knowledge still has the power to heal us.” Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller, Editor’s Choice
In the valley of the Mesta, one of the oldest inhabited rivers in Europe, where the surrounding forests and mountains are a nexus for wild plant gatherers, Kapka Kassabova finds a story with vast resonance for us all. Elixir is an exploration of the deep connections between people, plants and place.
Over several seasons, Kassabova spends time with the people of this magical region. She meets women and men who work in a long lineage of foragers, healers, and mystics. She learns about wild plants and the ancient practice of herbalism, and experiences a symbiotic system where nature and culture have blended for thousands of years. Through her captivating encounters we come to feel the devastating weight of the ecological and cultural disinheritance that the people of this valley have suffered. Yet, in her search for elixir, she also finds reasons for hope. The people of the valley are keepers of a rare knowledge, not only of mountain plants and their properties, but also of how to transform collective suffering into healing.
Elixir by Kapka Kassabova is available now for £20.
Author biography:
Kapka Kassabova is a writer of narrative non- fiction, poetry, and fiction. She grew up in Sofia,
Bulgaria, was university educated in New Zealand, and since 2005 has lived in Scotland. In Border
(2017) and To The Lake (2020) she explored the human geography of the southern Balkans. Border won the 2018 British Academy Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year, the 2017 Saltire Society
Book of the Year, the 2018 Highland Book Prize, and a number of European awards. To the Lake was awarded France’s Best Foreign Book of Non-Fiction in 2021, and her work is translated into twenty languages. Her earlier books of non-fiction are the tango memoir Twelve Minutes of Love (2011) and the childhood memoir Street Without a Name (2008).
More from Kapka Kassabova:
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe
£9.99
Winner of the 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award’s Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year
Kassabova sets out on a journey to meet the people of a triple border – Bulgarians, Turks, Greeks, and the latest wave of refugees fleeing conflict further afield.
To the Lake: A Journey of War and Peace
£9.99
Lake Ohrid and Lake Prespa. Two vast lakes joined by underground rivers. Two lakes that have played a central role in Kapka Kassabova’s maternal family. By exploring the stories of dwellers past and present, Kassabova uncovers the human history shaped by the Lakes.