Book cover of Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova
Eastern Europe

Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe

In this extraordinary work of narrative reportage, Kapka Kassabova returns to Bulgaria, from where she emigrated as a girl twenty-five years previously, to explore the border it shares with Turkey and Greece. When she was a child, the border zone was rumored to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall, and it swarmed with soldiers and spies. On holidays in the “Red Riviera” on the Black Sea, she remembers playing on the beach only miles from a bristling electrified fence whose barbs pointed inward toward the enemy: the citizens of the totalitarian regime. […Learn More]

Asia

The Border: A Journey Around Russia, Through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Norway and the Northeast Passage

The acclaimed author of Sovietistan travels along the seemingly endless Russian border and reveals the deep and pervasive influence it has had across half the globe. 

Imperial, communist or autocratic, Russia has been—and remains—a towering and intimidating neighbor.  Whether it is North Korea in the Far East through the former Soviet republics in Asia and the Caucasus, or countries on the Caspian Ocean and the Black Sea.  […Learn More]