‘A classic for our times’ MONIQUE ROFFEY

‘Haunting, beautiful… Anima will live with me for a long time’ CAL FLYN

'A book that mesmerises with its sense of adventure and epic sweep, this is creative non-fiction at its best' GUARDIAN

Over the course of one summer, Kapka Kassabova lives with perhaps the last true pastoralists in Europe.

She joins the epic seasonal movement of vast herds of sheep, along with shepherds and dogs, to find pasture in the mountains. As she becomes attuned to the sacrifices inherent in this isolated existence, Kassabova finds herself drawn deeper into the tangled relationships at the heart of this small community.

Anima is a spellbinding portrayal of the human–animal interdependence in pastoral life, and a plea for a different way of living – one where we might all begin to heal our broken relationship with the natural world.

‘An extraordinary work of exploration, both inner and outer. It should be required reading for everyone thinking about our human environment: which is to say, all of us’ THE TABLET

"A book that mesmerises with its sense of adventure and epic sweep, this is creative nonfiction at its best." - Guardian

"[Kassabova is] iron-hard and courageous, both on the page and in life... Roaming across the high pastures, Kassabova sees all our lives with clarity" - Spectator

"Kapka Kassabova’s new book is an extraordinary work of exploration, both inner and outer. It should be required reading for everyone thinking about our human environment: which is to say, all of us." - The Tablet

"The poet laureate of the margins... "Must I squeeze my experiences into such a small space when they are so much larger?" This question suffuses Kassabova's incandescent book, and she poses it relentlessly, in spare, hard prose - prose worthy of the rock and the raven" - Times Literary Supplement

"Kapka Kassabova has written a series of fascinating, idiosyncratic, often poetic non-fiction books which deal with issues of place, culture and identity… Her goal is to find some solutions to mankind’s broken relationship with nature. That’s a marker of her ambition as a writer. And her writing is worthy of it" - Herald