From The Sunday Times
July 27, 2008
Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria by Kapka Kassabova
Pub. by Portobello (UK), Penguin (NZ & Aust)


The Sunday Times review by Cathy Galvin

So. You've written a memoir, but nobody has heard of you. In English, which is not your native tongue. And it's also a travelogue about your beloved homeland, Bulgaria. Where? Ah yes, the Wombles! Uncle Bulgaria...The Bulgarian umbrella murder. Wrestlers, or was it weightlifters? Men - and women - with moustaches. And you have a small following in New Zealand, you say. For your, er, poetry.
It is from this implausible position that Kapka Kassabova's bitterly funny, brilliantly clever journey through her childhood and her troubled country breaks down a Berlin Wall of indifference towards her compatriots. Observing that Bulgaria generally merits the shortest entry in any travel book, she resolves in her opening chapter “to write my own Bulgaria into being”.


Read the full piece by Cathy Gavin , editor of the Sunday Times magazine. It is I guess a slightly condescending wink to poetry and NZ, but nevertheless an interesting review and being in the Sunday Times gains wide, welcome exposure for Kassabova's latest title.