The only thing I’m uncertain about in this uplifting and beautifully written book is its subtitle. Granted, the landscape Kapka Kassabova invokes does sound like ‘a place that struck you dumb with its majesty’, but we are not in some Shangri-La beyond the reach of mortals. The valley in question is a two-hour drive from a modern European capital. Elixir is set on the banks of the Mesta River (known as the Nestos in Greece), where its life-giving waters meet the forests and mountains of the western Rhodope range in Bulgaria.
Mesta’s montane flora has provided wild crops and herbal medicines for centuries
This is the author’s country of origin; but she left it 30 years ago and is unflinching in her judgment of its recent past, which she divides into three phases. There was the outright tyranny of the old Marxist state, with its peculiarly anti-environmental mantra: ‘In the fight against nature we shall be victorious!’ Then there was a transitional period of economic gangsterism; and finally a post-EU settlement of mature kleptocracy.
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