Graywolf Press

In this spellbinding travel narrative, poet and award-winning journalist Kapka Kassabova returns to her roots in the borderland between Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece. Nestled near the Black Sea and one of Europe’s greatest wildernesses, this rugged corner of the world has been overrun by shifting borders for millennia. From ancient Greece through the Ottoman Empire, to the Cold War and today’s Syrian refugees, the story takes switchbacks between cultures and centuries. One moment you’re sipping coffee with an armed border guard at The Disco cafe, the next you’re firewalking with an old woman carrying religious relics over hot coals. Boars and bears and wolves roam the old-growth beeches and oaks. And snakes, it seems, are everywhere. Is it 2016 or the 4th century BC? This kaleidoscopic exploration of boundaries—natural and man-made, real and imaginary—will forever change your bearings on the map.

Paul Kingsnorth's essays about giving up on mainstream environmentalism and finding something harder and more honest in its place. Kingsnorth argues that most green activism is just another form of progress worship. Uncomfortable, necessary, beautifully written.