Women in Translation Book Club: Balkan Rhapsody

Please note this meeting will be in person at the bookshop. There will be a mixture of in-person and online meetings throughout the year.

The Women In Translation reading group provides a free, friendly and gentle environment in which opinions are shared and new appreciations can be discovered. A place for curious minds and relaxed conversation hosted by poet and translator Annie Rutherford.

For May 2026 the book will meet in person to discuss is Balkan Rhapsody by Maria Kassimova-Moisset, translated by Iliyana Nedkova-Byrne.

Please support the bookshop & the book club by ordering your books through Lighthouse, Use the code LONG-VICTORIOUS-WIT for bookclubbers 10% off.

The Book:

Balkan Rhapsody is a historical novel based on the internal and external exile of the author’s Bulgarian fictionalised grandmother Miriam and her young family during the 1920s and 1930s. A tale of two coastal cities connected through the tumultuous waterways of the Black Sea, Miriam’s story begins in her native Burgas and follows her journey to Istanbul, where Eastern Orthodox and Muslim traditions and beliefs both unite and tear families apart.

‘Balkan Rhapsody oscillates between Burgas on the Black Sea coast and Istanbul, the buzzing metropolis of the interbellum. It is women’s writing at its best, chronicling a family’s meandering story, a quintessential Balkan litany where people of different backgrounds knew how to live together until they didn’t. A riveting story of everyday life affected by ethnonationalism and religious intolerance, of voluntary and forced migrations, of merciless losses and marvellous new beginnings. A worthy contribution toward the treasury of Balkan women’s writing that cherishes the region’s inherent multiculturalism, also present in the classical Anatolian stories of Greek exile Dido Sotiriu (1909-­ 2004) and the multiethnic universe of Armenian-­ Bulgarian Sevda Sevan (1945-­ 2009).’ Dina Iordanova, Professor of Film Studies, University of St Andrews, author of Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and the Media