Street without a mame: childhood and other misadventures in Bulgaria

Kassabova, Kapka (2008) Street without a mame: childhood and other misadventures in Bulgaria. Portobello Books Ltd, London. ISBN 1846271231

Abstract

A memoir of a childhood spent under communism, and a journey through post-communist Bulgaria twenty years later. "A profound meditation on the depth of change triggered by the events of 1989 throughout eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union." (The Guardian). 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.

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