To the Lake: A Balkan Journey of War and Peace

I loved Kassabova earlier books, especially Border for the poetic and mythical digressions which made an unfamiliar
region wonderful to read about. Sadly, this book is tedious and full of lengthy descriptions written without feeling. If she doesnt care, why should the reader?

Ms Kassabova clearly has a very good publicist – whole page features – but this is thin stuff. The many fault lines that bisect (even trisect) Lake Ohrid would yield a fascinating personal account of history, culture, landscape and ecology in this little-known frontier zone between Albania, former Yugoslav fragments, and a hint of Greece. Ms K recounts so many woes, gratuitously exhibited miseries, and sagas of long decline that she culls from her local informants (selected as more or less related or known from her family’s emigree past) – yet fails to reconcile them with the Google Earth image of a prosperous thriving lakeside and hinterland, well-cultivated and dotted with countless new villas. A motorway is even now bulldozing its way in on the Albanian side…
We really cannot be expected to find the trivial joys and difficulties of her touristic toedippings at all riveting, despite her ‘roots’ here (does anyone not have ‘roots’ somewhere, from which fate has yanked them ?)
Lurking beneath is a fascinating relationship with her mother, which might have given a much more rewarding heart to a personal memoir by someone with Ms K’s undoubted gift for readable unaffected prose.
Ms K’s lack of real interest in her roots is exposed when you discover that much of her ‘topography and ecology’ is copy-pasted from Wikipedia, and we know how uneven that source can be. When she proclaims early on that Lake Ohrid is one of the deepest in Europe, possibly even the world, without the least attempt to find out why (not difficult, and rather interesting), the game is already up.

Kapka Kassabova returned to her roots on a journey of exploration – of the land, its history and of her own family relationships, especially those of the maternal line. The lakes (Ohrid and Prespa) lie at the junction of Albania, North Macedonia and Greece, but the region’s history has been complicated by its changing ethnic and religious composition over a long period. Roman, Greek, Ottoman and communist cultures each left their mark. Kapka Kassabova is of Bulgarian origin but has migrated, as have many residents over the area’s turbulent past. Her fluent English is reflected in the outstandingly good prose she has employed.
Kapka Kassabova is not enthused by Greece’s impact on the Balkans. The passages in which she details families’s disruption can at times provide challenges to the reader’s concentration. Elsewhere, the writing is clear and engaging. She has illuminated a region which has not attracted huge numbers of foreign visitors in the recent past, and one can see that many readers would be inclined to add it to their itinerary if/when they survive Covid 19.

I have been riveted by this author- my third book I’ve read by her. When times are good again, I hope to travel to see all the places she describes.
I would recommend reading this with a map. An enchanting read.

The link between personal history and the history of the area was fascinating.
Who knew there was a border in the middle of a lake between Greece , Macedonia and Albania?
Not me!

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