Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this so much, it was right up my alley! If you like to read memoirs, outdoor adventures, or stories about specific cultures/regions, then this would be interesting to you too.

This nonfiction book is overall about the dying lifestyle of nomadic shepherds in the mountains of Bulgaria (and Greece, Macedonia, etc. before borders). It is also about the unique animals and a connection with the landscape that is dying with them as our world becomes increasingly closed off and we become more and more disconnected from the natural world.

The author, herself Bulgarian, travels to a nearly abandoned village in the mountains of southern Bulgaria and becomes fully enmeshed in the lives of a small group of people who are giving everything to keep an ancient breed of livestock guardian dog, the Karakachan, alive. Of course, a guardian dog needs a flock to guard, and the flock needs a shepherd and pasture. This ecosystem of connected roles is what the author seeks to document as the number of shepherds and flocks dwindles each year in this region.

This book is told in a slightly disorganized memoir style, which some readers might find hard to follow but which I found gave the book a dreamy quality. We follow the author as she travels with a shepherd, the troubled yet infinitely kind Sásho, to the Blackwater pastures high in the mountains, where they live in simple cabins and their entire day revolves, almost dreamlike, around the flock- the cycle of taking them out and back in, feeding the guardian dogs, watching for bears, treating injuries, etc. The author also describes the hard winters in the mountains and life in the village as opposed to the towns near the highway. I felt utterly absorbed in the environment she describes.

This is as much a work about people as it is about animals. In addition to getting to know the flock of ancient Karakachan sheep, you come to intimately know the very small community still living (or trying their best to) a nomadic pastoral life in this region. From serious feuds to romantic drama, to the ever-present specter of alcoholism, she describes not only the bliss of feeling interconnected with your environment, but the dark underbelly of living like this in a world not built for it anymore. She paints a full picture of this region within the broader context of historical conflicts, the influence of multiple ethnic groups, and modern capitalism and poverty.

The wildness and sense of place here reminded me a lot of Outlandish: Walking Europe’s Unlikely Landscapes by Nick Hunt, which I also adored, but the fact that the author is from this area and lived as part of the community she writes about gave this book an extra layer of depth for me.

I am so happy to have discovered this author, and will gladly pick up her other books and anything she writes in the future!

I really don't know how Kapka Kassabova does it. She came out with Elixir last year and one year later, now Anima. Both are fairly long (~400 pages), immersive and extremely detailed accounts of regions where she's obviously spent a lot of time, embedded even. I'm just in awe. Her writing is eloquent, poetic, and transporting as always. Border is her masterwork but this revisits that region, with a focus on pastoralism. It's a topic I wouldn't normally be that interested in or gravitate towards, but I know that any storytelling in her hands is going to be magnificent and she delivered. Really interesting, unusual, and thoughtful read.

Anima was an excellent read. I loved the character study and the writing felt propulsive. I would read more from this author again.

I saw this book on NetGalley and knew I had to read it. My grandfather was a Polish Highlander (góral), whose culture was greatly influenced by the Vlachs/Wallachians, and I immediately saw a connection in the summary of <I>Anima</I>. What I didn't know was that the shepherds of this book (the Karakachans/also known as Sarakatsani) are a different people from the Vlachs, and that this is the fourth installment of a Balkan cycle. Nevertheless, it was very interesting to learn about my grandpa's fellow mountain siblings and their struggle to keep alive some of their transhumance traditions amidst all of the current challenges (damn the National Parks system!).

<B>Content warnings</B>:
- Roma slur, and racism against the Roma people
- suicidal ideation/threats
- ableism
- substance addiction

Kassabova has made a thorough investigation of this people's nomadic routes (and roots) across the mountains of Greece and Bulgaria, with special attention paid to cheesemaking, the breeding of the Karakachan dogs, goatherding, and sheepherding. She most <I> <B>definitely</I></B> romanticizes her subjects and their way of life (even as she doesn't shy away from the sometimes gross and oftentimes miserable details). Going in, I was worried about how much of a pastoral fantasy/"wild pastoral" this would be, since this is something I truly dislike, a concept rooted in settler colonialism and the extermination of indigenous peoples. There were definitely many elements of this, but the author mostly spoke about how nomadic lifestyles (that are disappearing fast) are healthier for the land and the animals and that, even though they don't turn out a huge profit, they are worth turning to again for cultural reasons, ecological reasons, for health, and the preservation of ancient animal breeds (and I'm probably accidentally leaving out more reasons).

Her message, however, gets a bit lost in the romantic subplot between her and the main shepherd, Sásho. Not that it wasn't interesting to read—I was extremely invested! But at some point around the middle I remember thinking, what about the sheep? What about the dogs?

I also have a few more critiques, mostly with the sweeping claims she makes in the beginning. More than once, she mentions the Sarakatsani people as being the last nomads, but that's obviously not true, as there are peoples still practicing their nomadic way of life today (she does this a lot: "the nomad hearth [in the Balkans]"; "the last nomads [of the Balkans] were the Karakachans"). The first section bothered me greatly, the way it almost fetishized these people and their struggle compared to the "pampered people." She also tended to compare these people to marginalized groups, as if to try to bring home Just How Terrible Their Plight Was. Once she got past this section, the author improved by leaps and bounds. (Unfortunately, some of the others featured in the book were extremely racist when it came to the Roma people, and the author never commented out loud or in her notes about how these views were, well, not true. She did have a brief outline of the Roma's history in extremely general terms, but it didn't feel like it was enough.)

What I love most about this book, though, was how she brought to readers the conflict between these modern nomads and bureaucracy. The old Karakachan grazing routes crossed what are now the borders of a few different countries, which obviously makes things difficult today. Also, legalizing pastoralism "brought some terrible side-effects. One was the amount of paperwork it now involved. This made it prohibitive to people with low literary skills and made room for entrepreneurs who couldn't care less about grazing animals but were good at paperwork — and pocketing subsidies." Then there were the national parks, which let shepherds graze their sheep for a price and fined them whenever they could.

The meat of the book is about how shepherds are at risk of extinction, and that they are the biggest problem when it comes to restoring nomadic traditions. They live in extreme isolation for half the year, and often turn to alcohol to get through the loneliness. The main shepherd we follow through the book, unfortunately, embodies these problems (even if he is also very lovable).

It's difficult for me to give an overall impression of the book as a whole. Some of it made me so mad that I was sure I couldn't continue. Other parts were extremely engrossing and fascinating. And others felt like I was connecting with distant relatives somehow. It's interesting how traditions bleed over.

One more note, to whomever formatted this book to be read on NetGalley: the format was almost unreadable. The text was so tiny! Even turning my phone sideways wasn't enough. I also couldn't highlight or make any notes. Downloading the book for the Kindle saved it for me, though! Many thanks to NetGalley and Graywolf Press for letting me read a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

Between the historical background that provided on the pastoral lifestyle that used to be so much more prevelant, to the nitty gritty daily details for those still striving to keep the traditions alive in the present (all of which were captured beautifully by Kassabova's prose), I found myself completely and absolutely immersed as I learned about what was, what remains, and see brief glimpses of what could be.