Borrowed Land

Brave, intense, unexpected, lyrical and troubling – Rory StewartCombines the detail and intimacy of boots on the ground reportage with the universality of a dark fable. This is a Highland story, but also a global story - a poetic and haunting anatomy of what happens when a world is addicted to extraction. – James CrawfordTo read Borrowed Land by Kapka Kassabova is to understand what it means to slip one’s skin and become a river, a forest or a mountain… This mesmeric and intimate testimony becomes a defiant dreamlike thrum of resistance to corporate greed… Brilliant, daring and urgent – Sally HubandThis is a hugely important, and timely, book. It has filled me with anger and despair, as well as a good deal of hope – Angus Peter CampbellEssential and revelatory reading. It’s full of quiet rage on behalf of the old land – and the health and dignity of the humans that live there – being destroyed by industrial capitalism. It’s a wake-up call that exposes the great lie of a profit-driven corporate decarbonisation. Kapka’s writing is ferocious and instinctive, and my copy is full of underlined passages and folded corners, so much is there to treasure. – Kerry AndrewKassabova reveals both the tragic beauty of the Highlands and the greedy madness of the way the energy transition is unfolding in stark and moving prose. A hymn, a howl and a call to action all at once. – Ben RawlenceI couldn’t quite understand how something which chronicles such terrible destruction could be quite so uplifting. It is because Kassabova has hit on some fire at the centre of life. Love is attention, and here is the most beautiful portrayal and expression of love – Horatio ClareA devastating account of change in one part of the Scottish Highlands - the death of valleys and their people, the death of forests and rivers and how extraction and energy generation has ripped through this place. Such powerful writing, such anguish and love. Kapka Kassabova has written another brilliant book. – Philip MarsdenAn important and deeply tragic account of yet another phase in the long history of the exploitation of the Highlands and the complete powerlessness of the actual inhabitants, this time in the name of renewable energy, a disturbing paradox – Madeleine BuntingCulloden, in 1746, ended the old life of the Highlands. But Kassabova brilliantly shows, in this fierce, tender, plangent and compellingly readable book, that Culloden itself continues: that there are new and more sinister invaders, and that the clans must rally once more. – Charles FosterA deeply moving, fierce and tender book about one of the most beautiful of Highland glens. Freighted with grief and a profound sense of injustice at the exploitation of this land, Borrowed Land shows us what really matters: the people, stories and wildlife of this unique place. – James Macdonald LockhartNo other writer’s political acuity matches her responsiveness to the natural world, whose despair at the human propensity for greed and corruption is matched by her insistence on the moral necessity for hope. “Nature writing” doesn’t do justice to her range. – Jonathan Coe * Guardian *What I most treasure about this book is that it shows what love of place can do: how it moves people to action, how it creates possibility, how it is laced with sorrow. To be able to look at beauty and life in the eye while they’re under threat takes a particular kind of courage, and Kapka Kassabova has it in abundance – Roxani KrystalliKassabova’s excavation of the history of the glen…is detailed and interesting, and her mourning for its lost language genuine * Literary Review *She writes… with wit, perspicacity and lyricism… If you love the Highlands and care about their future, you should read it. It will both delight and deeply concern you. – Kate Green * Country Life *An immersive portrait of the glen of Strathglass and its river-hewn offshoots… Borrowed Land is…part of an essential conversation, and we are lucky to have this contribution from a writer of this calibre * Times Literary Supplement *This howl of rage at what is happening to the Highlands does not make for an easy read, but this is an important account of how this great wilderness is being exploited * Daily Mail *[Kassabova’s] dialogue is bright and engaging, and offers genuine insight into the dynamics and kinship of people and place * Observer *

Kapka Kassabova is a prizewinning writer of narrative non-fiction. Her recent Balkan quartet includes Anima (2024), Elixir (2023), To the Lake (2020), and Border (2017).

Her awards include:

• A British Academy prize
• The Scottish Book of the Year
• The Stanford-Dolman Travel Book of the Year
• The Highland Book Prize
• The Prix Nicolas-Bouvier
• The Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger
• The Premio Mazzotti

Kassabova grew up in Sofia, Bulgaria, and migrated to New Zealand before settling in Scotland twenty years ago. She lives by a Highland river.

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