Skip to main content
book cover for Borrowed Land

Borrowed Land

A Highland Story

You must sign in to see if this title is available for request. Sign In or Register Now

Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app


1

To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.

2

Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.

Pub Date Dec 01 2026 | Archive Date Jan 01 2027

Farrar, Straus and Giroux | North Point Press


Description

The epic, urgent story of a Scottish glen, its destruction and renewal, and those fighting to protect their home.

This is the intimate story of a Scottish glen and its inhabitants, of whom I am one.

Powerful rivers that bring life and prosperity. Pictish cairns, undisturbed for centuries. Meadows of bluebells, where deer emerge, godlike, and disappear in a flash. In this and more, Kapka Kassabova reveals a beloved place achingly beautiful and alive, but in real and imminent danger.

In the Highlands, centuries-old connections between the land, nature, and people continue to be shaken by the forces of colonialism, industry, depopulation, and speculation. Borrowed Land tells the intimate stories of those who are working against this disconnect, fighting to preserve their home.

An extraordinary portrait of a place vanishing into myth and all the life—plant, animal, human—it has held, Kapka Kassabova’s Borrowed Land is an epic and urgent story of destruction and renewal told through her own story and her encounters with those who may be the last of the Highlanders.

The epic, urgent story of a Scottish glen, its destruction and renewal, and those fighting to protect their home.

This is the intimate story of a Scottish glen and its inhabitants, of whom I am one.

...


A Note From the Publisher

Kapka Kassabova is an award-winning writer of narrative prose and poetry. Her recent Balkan quartet includes Anima, Elixir, To the Lake, and Border. Her work has been short-listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was awarded a British Academy Prize and Scottish Book of the Year, among other honors. Kassabova grew up in Sofia, Bulgaria, and today lives by a river in the Scottish Highlands.

Kapka Kassabova is an award-winning writer of narrative prose and poetry. Her recent Balkan quartet includes Anima, Elixir, To the Lake, and Border. Her work has been short-listed for the National...


Advance Praise

“[Borrowed Land] combines the detail and intimacy of ‘boots on the ground’ reportage with the universality of a dark fable. This is a Highland story, but also a global story—­a poetic and haunting anatomy of what happens when a world is addicted to extraction.” —James Crawford, author of The Edge of the Plain

“Kassabova reveals both the tragic beauty of the Highlands and the greedy madness of the way the energy transition is unfolding in stark and moving prose. A hymn, a howl, and a call to action all at once.” —Ben Rawlence, author of The Treeline

“[Borrowed Land] combines the detail and intimacy of ‘boots on the ground’ reportage with the universality of a dark fable. This is a Highland story, but also a global story—­a poetic and haunting...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9780374621766
PRICE $20.00 (USD)
PAGES 352

Available on NetGalley

NetGalley Reader (EPUB)
NetGalley Shelf App (EPUB)
Send to Kindle (EPUB)
Send to Kobo (EPUB)
Download (EPUB)