Balkan Rhapsody is a triple debut: the first novel by the prolific Bulgarian-born journalist and storyteller Maria Kassimova-Moisset; Tippermuir Books’ first translation from Bulgarian and the first Bulgarian book published in Scotland, plus my own first literary fiction in translation from Bulgarian into English. It is also, I believe, a quiet act of resistance—and a perfect offering for Women in Translation Month throughout August 2026.
As we mark the book’s first publication anniversary on 4 August 2026 and after a couple of reprints, I am compelled to remember how I fell under the spell of Balkan Rhapsody. It was soon after its release by the Bulgarian publisher Colibri in 2018, having followed Maria’s career for decades—from her early columns and broadcasts to her campaign for a Vice President Candidate of Bulgaria. Yet it was only after years of translating from English into Bulgarian (including Salvador Dalí’s sole novel, Hidden Faces) and writing and curating directly in English about contemporary art, that I found myself ready to bring Maria’s voice into the Anglosphere.
The unwavering credo of the translator-curator is what I identify with most. I see translation as an organic extension of my curatorial practice—an activist mission to champion women/non-binary artists and authors through publications, performances, exhibitions, festivals and residencies. Maria’s Balkan Rhapsody joins a lineage of creative women I have long explored and curated: Madelon Hooykaas, Erica Jong, Margaret Morris, Mare Tralla, Katherina Radeva, Marlene Millar, Alla Georgieva, Miranda Whall, Mairi Campbell, Alison Harm, Emma Ready, Lorraine Pritchard and many more.
But I could not have anticipated that my own path would lead me to amplify Maria’s voice in Scotland, where I have honed my craft as a translator-curator since 1997. As a founding member of Found in Translation at Edinburgh’s Central Library, I have read and reviewed fiction in translation while engaging with initiatives like the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, the British Comparative Literature Association and the British Centre for Literary Translation. I have also followed the work of Meytal Radzinski, who in 2016 founded Women in Translation Month and, in an interview with the American Literary Translators Association, pinpointed a persistent problem: the scarcity of translated literature by women in the English-language book world is rooted in the biases of both translators and publishers.
That scarcity remains acute for contemporary Bulgarian fiction by women and non-binary authors. I was astonished by how few such books exist in English. Could Balkan Rhapsody be one of a handful? Could Tippermuir be the only Scottish press to rise to this challenge?
Perhaps the gates are opening. The 2023 International Booker Prize was awarded for the first time to a Bulgarian novel —Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel. The 2026 International Booker Prize shortlist also featured a Bulgarian novel – She Who Remains, this time by a contemporary woman/non-binary author Rene Karabash, translated by Izidora Angel. Let us hope that fellow translators-curators will push for more contemporary Bulgarian female novelists. And let us hope that more language activists will join our struggle for the recognition of female autobiographical fiction like Balkan Rhapsody—works that must not be reduced to the author’s life, dismissed as small, domestic or narcissistic, but read as the epic historical novels they truly are.
Balkan Rhapsody follows the internal and external exile of the author’s fictionalised grandmother Miriam and her young family during the 1920s and 1930s, a time of turmoil after the Balkan Wars and the First World War—when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, new states emerged, borders were redrawn and hundreds of thousands of refugees were forced to migrate. The novel plays an elegiac rhapsody to these forced displacements across today’s Albania, Greece, Romania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Turkey.
Born to a Greek mother and Bulgarian father, Miriam—often called ‘Miya, the fearless lassie’—defies societal norms while stoically enduring ostracism and banishment from her native Burgas. With radical hope for a new life, she and Ahmed sail to Istanbul with their young son Haalim, only to be rejected, divided and lured back home by the ship’s siren a few years later.
The novel also paints a vivid picture of multi-ethnic integration and assimilation within the post-WWI Balkan nation-states—a world of Muslims, Jews, Catholics and Orthodox Christians, among Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Serbs, Romanians and Bulgarians, who coexisted for over four centuries under Ottoman rule. Burgas and Istanbul emerge as intertwined cities, connected not only by family saga but by the Black Sea and centuries of turbulent history.
One of the book’s most fascinating features is the richness of its borrowed vocabulary—the fusion of Latin, Cyrillic and Greek scripts and languages. I have kept the syntactic and morphological register of these Balkanisms, italicised them throughout and gathered them in a glossary. Turkisms abound, as they do in contemporary Bulgarian journalism, carrying much the same range of emotive meanings they have since Ottoman times—colour, flavour and a hint of resentment. Yet in Balkan Rhapsody, they also serve a satirical purpose: they lift the spirits and provide comic relief, as if to help the characters endure the harsh adversities of history.
This pervasive use of Turkisms led me to seek parallels with the linguistic tension between mainstream English and the Scots leid in Scotland. I lucked out on Scots diminutives like wee, lassie and laddie, which mirror the Bulgarian affection for suffixes that soften names and words to denote fondness and attachment.
To my mind, Maria’s prosesummons the storytelling power of another Balkan novelist at large—Elif Shafak––the power to pull the exiled, forgotten and unheard from the annals of history back into existence and force us to bear witness. Balkan Rhapsody is also the autobiographical counterpart of Kapka Kassabova’s award-winning nonfiction works Border and To the Lake. These uprooted authors share a lucid fascination with the complex, kaleidoscopic Balkan identity where ‘Occident’ and ‘Orient’ collide and unite. If Kapka lays out the historical facts, Maria and Elif allow us to feel what it might have been like to grow up and survive in this multicultural, post-colonial, porous region.
Embracing poetic spells and similes, period humour and horror, contemporary theatrical asides and clear-eyed investigative journalism with overtones of pizzazz, Maria’s autofiction is steeped in history—just like the region it portrays. I could not be more proud to have teamed with my brilliant editors Cara Blacklock and Paul Philippou, plus all at Colibri and Tippermuir Books, to bring Maria’s enchanting debut novel of sorrows, joys and gripping Balkan rhapsodies to the shores of Scotland—and beyond.
As Maria herself urges us:
“We need to know our past as Europeans. It is up to us to tell our own stories to other Europeans. After all, we hear them telling us their stories of Vikings, selkies and seafaring folk, Sicilians, Celts and many more.”
This August, for Women in Translation Month, let us tell those stories—and ensure they are heard because each and everyone matters.
This is an abridged version of the Translator’s Note which accompanies Balkan Rhapsody.
Maria Kassimova-Moisset is a writer, storyteller, theatre-maker, broadcaster, educator and human rights activist. Critically acclaimed, Close Encounters with Mixed Feelings was Maria’s first collection of short stories and essays, followed by her debut novel, Balkan Rhapsody, which has already been translated and published in French, English and Serbian. A feature-length film adaptation is underway. The sequel of Balkan Rhapsody is due out in Bulgarian in late 2026. https://www.facebook.com/maria.kassimovamoisset
Iliyana Nedkova-Byrne is a curator of contemporary visual and performing arts with over 30 years of professional practice. In 2024, she was selected as one of the 100 most influential creatives in Scotland by The List Magazine. Her curatorial interests include literature in translation, women artists works, arts and activism, artist’s moving image culture and intangible cultural heritage. As a writer, speaker and literary translator, Iliyana has contributed to a wide range of conferences, publications and books. https://iliyananedkova.wordpress.com/