Street without name
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Biographie de l'auteur Kapka Kassabova was born in 1973. She was raised in Sofia, Bulgaria, and educated by her scientist parents, then in the French lycée in Sofia, and two New Zealand universities. In 1990, her family moved to England, and later to New Zealand. She had year-long stays in France and Germany, and in 2005 she moved back to Britain and is now living in Edinburg.She has published two books of poetry in the UK Someone Else’Life (2003) and Geography for the Lost (2007). She has also received awards, in particular, a Commonwealth Writers Prize for Asia-Pacific, and she was twice named NZ Cathay Pacific travel writer of the year for travel journalism. 'Street Without a Name' has been selected by Jan Morris as her book of the year for the Financial Times.
Résumé “Born on the muddy outskirts of Sofia, Kapka Kassabova grew up under Communism, got away just as soon as she could, and has loved and hated her homeland in equal measure ever since.Now, as Bulgaria officially joins the EU club, Kapka revisits the country of her childhood and her own muddled relationship to it to discover just how much it – and she – has changed. With the irreverence of an expat and the curiosity as of a visitor, the author travels back to surreal scenes of her childhood when shops were empty and the walls had ears; samples its bizarre tourist sites and rough-hewn hospitality industry, and uncovers its centuries’ old history of bloodshed and blurred borders, and captures the absurdities and idiosyncrasies of her own and her country’s past.”
Extraits “The chemist, the nuclear physicist and the engineer knew that their everyday life , when put into words, sounded like a joke without a punch line. Not unlike the Russian deficit joke the laughed at: A man in the deli section of a supermarket says to the butcher behind the counter, « Can you slice up some salami for me? » The butcher replies, « Sure. Just bring the salami. »“My mother had experienced the toilets of hospitals after giving birth, during kidney surgery, during her mother’s hospitalization with cancer. She had endured the toilets at the Central Institute of Computational Technology, and the toilets at freezing railway stations. And so there she stood, in the sparkling, perfumed, pink-toilet-papered, flower-arranged, mirrored, white marble toilet of Delft University, clean as a surgery theatre, gilded as an opera hill, bigger than our apartment… and she cried.” « The sky is packing up and I look back at the Turkish family who are begging to pack up too. It was their Ottoman ancestors who designed the bridge, but I have no way of asking how they feel about this heritage, how it feels to be descendent of the national oppressor, how it feels to see graffiti like the ones in the Peach street in Sofia : ‘Death to Turks.’ (…) And for as long as some Bulgarians have to believe it was the Romans who built the bridge before they can admire it, these questions remain hard to answer, and harder yet to ask. »
Critiques This is one of the best memory books on a Communist childhood that I have read. Moreover, it’s not written as a litany of misery or self-pity, but as a funny and ironic story, yetl not leaving out any miserable detail.The author evokes very significant humiliating aspects of soviet life, starting with toilets and food to officially non-existing elite schools. The book touches to the heart anyone who has been living under the soviet regime: in the current EU context, many of ‘new’ Member States. This very witty book - through laughs and irony - is a tribute to our everyday sufferings during that time. In the second part of the book, apart from introducing the soviet/communist reality of the time, the author also introduces Bulgaria, the country that – according to her - barely anyone knows. This is done in a very interesting and engaging manner and makes us discover very interesting and hidden details of Bulgarian history. Thus, the book is a mix of tourist guide, history book and memories wrapped up in a sharp and funny language. As one of the greatest success of the book I’d name the simple and very explanatory manner in which communist hell is explained and thus can be understood by those who didn’t live it. Why should anyone feel shocked in a clean toilet? Why should we be happy about wearing shoes of the right size? The book was a great travel down the memory lane of my own childhood.
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Dernières nouvelles
| 9 décembre 2009 |
| Le prix du livre européen a couronné pour sa 3ème édition, dans la catégorie romans Gottland de Mariusz Szczgiel publié aux éditions Actes Sud et L’Europe pour les nuls de Sylvie Goulard publié aux éditions First. |
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3 novembre 2009 |
| Le jury du prix du livre européen s’est réuni à Bruxelles et a retenu quatre romans et quatre essais Les romans Ceux qui marchent dans les villes de Jean-François Dauven (Belgique) Courlande de Jean-Paul Kauffmann (France) Gottland de Marius Szczygiel (Pologne) Street without name, Kapka Kassabova (Bulgarie) Les essais Der Erste riss in der Mauer, Andreas Oplatka (Hongrie) La constitution européenne en vers, collectif de poètes belge (Belgique) Les empires coloniaux européens, Henri Wesseling (Pays-Bas) L’Europe pour les nuls, Sylvie Goulard (France) Le prix du livre européen sera remis le 9 décembre 2009 à 18h au Parlement européen à Bruxelles et sera suivi, à 20h30, d'une soirée théâtrale et musicale au Théâtre Varia. |
Lauréats 2009
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Roman Gottland de Mariusz Szczygiel , éditions Actes Sud.
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Essai L’Europe pour les nuls de Sylvie Goulard, éditions First |
Consultez la revue de presse
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Lauréat 2008
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Après-guerre, une histoire de l'Europe depuis 194 |
| de Tony Judt |
Tony Judt nous convie à une étude fine et éclairée des principales évolutions politiques, économiques, sociales et culturelles, à l’échelle du continent ou du pays. Au total, c’est une sorte de biographie d’un continent qui s’efforce après un passé dramatique, de se reconstruire et de tracer de nouveau sa route. Les analyses de l’auteur sont éclairantes, toujours originales, pleines de fulgurance. Elles ne nous laissent pas indifférents et nous invitent à relire avec un regard neuf cette longue période de l’histoire (1945-2005) que l’on croit pourtant familière. Editions Armand Colin |
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