Fascinating. . . . At its heart, this is an emotional story about the bonds between humans, animals, and the land. A lush ode to ‘one of the oldest nomadic peoples to have entered modernity with their animals.’” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“What [Kassabova] finds is a world that appears at once out of time—bedeviled by wolf attacks and sheep theft—and entirely contemporary, with industrialization and the pull of consumerism threatening to finally consign the shepherds, and the rare animal breeds they cultivate, to extinction. As Kassabova deepens her relationships with her subjects, she is both confronted and enchanted by their lonely, often harshly beautiful existence.”—The New Yorker
“In this quartet [Kassabova] has raised a bittersweet monument to her native lands, intimate in its knowledge and imbued with a sensibility that reanimates language. . . . The people to whom she instinctively relates are transients and outsiders, and the natural world, in its seeming permanence, becomes at once a wild haven and the bedrock of her impassioned books.”—Colin Thubron, The New York Review of Books
“Kassabova lovingly chronicles the solitude and toil of the Karakachans, a once-nomadic Balkan people whose existence is now threatened by global warming and industrialization.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Kassabova’s lyrical sensibility will transport readers. . . . This pensive travelogue captures the rigors and attractions of a vanishing way of life.” —Publishers Weekly
“A book that mesmerises with its sense of adventure and epic sweep, this is creative nonfiction at its best.” —Monique Roffey, The Guardian (UK)
“Kassabova is iron-hard and courageous, both on the page and in life.” —Mark Cocker, The Spectator (UK)
“Kassabova’s prose constantly moves and surprises, unfolding from one image into the next, like the flock.”—Erika Howsare, Los Angeles Review of Books
★ 2024-05-17
A fascinating account of pastoralism in the Balkans.
In her fourth book set in a region unknown to many readers, Kassabova examines the threats facing one of the few remaining nomadic peoples in modernity: the Karakachans, “Greek speakers of mysterious origin” whose homeland is “impossible to know.” Moving their animals in search of fresh pasture, they have spent centuries breeding ancient races of sheep and dogs. Today, amid the tumult of climate change and political conflicts, their way of life is threatened. “Thirty years ago,” writes the author, “it had been the Karakachan dog and sheep on the brink of extinction. Now it was the shepherd.” In the modern world, their nomadic lifestyles are very difficult to maintain. Shepherds are completely isolated, living alone in unheated shacks and sleeping with the sheep in mountain storms (“You stand in the rain, plastic sheet draped over you like a hut and you wait”). As industrialization and bureaucracy have increased, the production of artisan goods is also under threat. With the same elegantly spare prose that characterized her previous books, Kassabova brings readers to a place where everything “was attached to rock, hewn from rock, reclaimed from rock or possessed the qualities of rock.” The stoic people she profiles seem like they might be hewn from rock, as well. Then there’s the ancient Karakachan dogs: “Their eyes were human. They walked with the loose gait of wolves and the puppies were like bear cubs, with expressions so knowing they stopped you in your tracks and made you stare as if into the eyes of an old friend. They were aloof and conscious of it.” At its heart, this is an emotional story about the bonds between humans, animals, and the land.
A lush ode to “one of the oldest nomadic peoples to have entered modernity with their animals.
