After years on the outside Bulgaria has finally made it into the EU club but beyond the cliches about undrinkable plonk cheap property & assassins with poison-tipped umbrellas the country remains a largely unknown quantity Born on the muddy outskirts of Sofia Kapka Kassabova grew up under Communism got away just as soon as she could & has loved & hated her homeland in equal measure ever since In this illuminating & entertaining memoir Kapka revisits Bulgaria & her own muddled relationship to it travelling back to the scenes of her childhood sampling its bizarre tourist sites uncovering its centuries' old history of bloodshed & blurred borders & capturing the absurdities & idiosyncrasies of her own & her country's past