Kapka Kassabova was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria in the 1970s and 1980s. Her family emigrated to New Zealand just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and she spent her late teens and twenties in New Zealand where she studied French Literature and published two poetry collections and the Commonwealth-Writers Prize-winner for debut fiction in Asia-Pacific, Reconnaissance.
In 2004, Kapka moved to Scotland and published Street Without a Name (Portobello, 2008). It is a story of the last Communist childhood and a journey across post-communist Bulgaria. It was short-listed for the Dolman Travel Book Award.
The music memoir Twelve Minutes of Love (Portobello 2011), a tale of Argentine tango, obsession and the search for home, was short-listed for the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards.
Villa Pacifica (Alma Books 2011), a novel with an equatorial setting, came out at the same time.
Border: a journey to the edge of Europe (2017 Granta/ Greywolf) is an exploration of Europe’s remotest border region.
Her essays and articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, Vogue, The Sunday Times, The Scottish Review of Books, The NZ Listener, The New Statesman, and 1843 Magazine.
Books in order of publication:
Novels and narrative non-fiction
Reconnaissance, Penguin NZ 1999
Love in the Land of Midas, London: Penguin, 2001
Street Without a Name, Portobello 2008
Villa Pacifica, Penguin NZ/ Alma Books 2011
Twelve Minutes of Love: A Tango Story, Portobello 2011
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, Granta 2017/ Greywolf 2017,
To the Lake: A Balkan Journey of War and Peace, Granta 2020,
Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time, Jonathan Cape 2023 / Greywolf 2023,
Poetry
All Roads Lead to the Sea, Auckland University Press
Dismemberment, Auckland University Press 1999
Someone Else’s Life, Bloodaxe 2003
Geography for the Lost, Bloodaxe 2007
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