Border by Kapka
Kassabova wins
British Academy’s £25,000 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize
for Global Cultural
Understanding 2018
#AlRodhanPrize
· “Extraordinary” book by
Bulgarian-born writer chosen to receive international award
London:
Kapka Kassabova is today, Tuesday 30 October, announced as the winner of the
British Academy’s 6th Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural
Understanding 2018, for her book Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe.
Published
by Granta Books, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, is an
exploration of the border zone between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece – a close
study of how borders shape people’s lives. Kassabova returns to the land
of her childhood, intricately weaving the individual stories of the people she
meets there into the wider history of the region.
Kassabova,
was born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1973. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, she
emigrated with her family to New Zealand in 1992, where she studied French and
Russian Literature at university. In 2005 she moved to Edinburgh and
now lives in the Scottish Highlands. She is a writer of poetry, fiction and
narrative non-fiction.
The
£25,000 prize was presented by Chair of the jury and Foreign Secretary of the
British Academy, Professor Ash Amin CBE FBA, at a ceremony at the British
Academy in central London.
Commenting
on behalf of the jury he said:
“Kapka
Kassabova has written an extraordinary book, an important contribution to the
urgent debate about global cultural understanding. Border has
an original, compelling narrative which explores the notion of the border, not
just as a frontier but as a psychological and cultural dynamic. The book is a
description of a meeting place between past and present, peoples, culture and
nature, written in a mesmerising style, peopled with vivid characters and full
of sharply drawn encounters. Border invests the theme of
cultural understanding with a magical quality, mixing observation, biography
and lyricism.”
Speaking
on behalf of the British Academy, Chief Executive Alun Evans added:
“The
British Academy proudly champions the humanities and social sciences, and these
subjects’ power to illustrate and illuminate. Without well-researched, deeply
knowledgeable books like this we cannot begin to get to grips with the
important cultural challenges we all face in today’s world. We are delighted to
award this year’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize to Kapka Kassabova.”
On publication, Border was met with critical
acclaim. The Sunday Times called it a “smokily intense and
quiveringly powerful travel book”.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times wrote:
“Kassabova is a poet, and her writing is beautiful - moving and witty by
turns... In a world ever more divided, ever more threatened by Mexican walls,
restrictive new passports and fear of the unknown, we need books like this.”
Together
with Professor Ash Amin, this year’s judges are historian and political
scientist Rana Mitter FBA; social anthropologist Dame Henrietta Moore DBE FBA;
writer and broadcaster Professor Patrick Wright FBA and writer Madeleine
Bunting.
Alongside
Kapka Kassabova, the five other books on this year’s shortlist were: The
Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle Between Faith and
Reason by Christopher de Bellaigue, (The Bodley Head); Al-Britannia:
A Journey Through Muslim Britain by James Fergusson, (Bantam
Press); Black Tudors: The Untold Story by Miranda Kaufmann,
(Oneworld); I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of
Jihad by Souad Mekhennet, (Virago) and Tears of Rangi: Experiments
Across Worlds by Dame Anne Salmond (Auckland University Press).
The
British Academy’s prestigious international prize was established in 2013, to
reward and celebrate the best works of non-fiction that demonstrate rigour and
originality, have contributed to global cultural understanding and illuminate
the interconnections and divisions that shape cultural identity worldwide.
The
last three winners were Timothy Garton Ash for Free Speech (2017),
Professor Carole Hillenbrand for Islam: A New Historical
Introduction (2016), and Dr Neil MacGregor for A History of
the World in 100 Objects and Germany: Memories of a Nation (2015).
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