Hugh Thomson

Lake Ohrid: an oasis of peace in the war-torn Balkans

High up on rocks surrounding the lake are many monasteries celebrating lives of prayer and silence — in a region renowned for its turbulence and savagery

issue 15 February 2020

Kapka Kassabova’s previous travel book, Border, was rightly acclaimed and won several prizes. The author travelled to the edge of Europe, between Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey, and teased out ‘where something like Europe begins and something else ends, which isn’t quite Asia’.

This is a sequel of sorts. She now travels to another border, that between Macedonia, Albania and Greece, where the vast and beautiful Lake Ohrid remains one of the Balkans’ surviving religious melting pots, despite considerable nationalist pressure.

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