hello and welcome to talking books at hay festival in wales with me, stig abell. festival brings to a small tented village a group of politicians and artists, writers and thinkers, a heady mix of people designed to stimulate debate and ideas. i'll be talking to kapka kassabova whose book border is both a literal exploration of a base where east meets west and a poetic meditation on how we create divisions between people through a combination of race and religion, history and chance. kapka kassabova, welcome to talking books. applause. kapka, the book has a combination of a sort ofjournalist and poet about it, in terms of the use of language and the inquiring mind. but before we talk about how you go about writing this, perhaps you might give us a brief reading. ‘klyon was the pet name bulgarian border soldiers gave the electrified, alarmed wall of barbed wire that ran through the forest and sealed off the country from its neighbours. the official name was saorajenieto, the installation, and the installation was ostensibly there to stop enemies from infiltrating. b