In her fourth book set in a region unknown to many readers, Kassabova examines the threats facing one of the few remaining nomadic peoples in modernity: the Karakachans, \u201cGreek speakers of mysterious origin\u201d whose homeland is \u201cimpossible to know.\u201d Moving their animals in search of fresh pasture, they have spent centuries breeding ancient races of sheep and dogs. Today, amid the tumult of climate change and political conflicts, their way of life is threatened. \u201cThirty years ago,\u201d writes the author, \u201cit had been the Karakachan dog and sheep on the brink of extinction. Now it was the shepherd.\u201d In the modern world, their nomadic lifestyles are very difficult to maintain. Shepherds are completely isolated, living alone in unheated shacks and sleeping with the sheep in mountain storms (\u201cYou stand in the rain, plastic sheet draped over you like a hut and you wait\u201d). As industrialization and bureaucracy have increased, the production of artisan goods is also under threat. With the same elegantly spare prose that characterized her previous books, Kassabova brings readers to a place where everything \u201cwas attached to rock, hewn from rock, reclaimed from rock or possessed the qualities of rock.\u201d The stoic people she profiles seem like they might be hewn from rock, as well. Then there\u2019s the ancient Karakachan dogs: \u201cTheir eyes were human. They walked with the loose gait of wolves and the puppies were like bear cubs, with expressions so knowing they stopped you in your tracks and made you stare as if into the eyes of an old friend. They were aloof and conscious of it.\u201d At its heart, this is an emotional story about the bonds between humans, animals, and the land.<\/p>\n
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In her fourth book set in a region unknown to many readers, Kassabova examines the threats facing one of the few remaining nomadic peoples in modernity: the Karakachans, \u201cGreek speakers of mysterious origin\u201d whose homeland is \u201cimpossible to know.\u201d Moving their animals in search of fresh pasture, they have spent centuries breeding ancient races of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/54"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}