Overview

Kosovo: the name conjures up blood: ethnic cleansing and war. This book reveals another side to the newest country in the world a land of generous families, strong tastes and lush landscapes: a land of honey. Elizabeth Gowing is rushed to Kosovo, on a blind date with the place , when her partner is suddenly offered the position of adviser to Prime Minister Agim �eku. Knowing nothing of the language or politics, she is thrown into a world of unpronounceable nouns, unfamiliar foods and bewilderingly hospitable people. On her first birthday in Kosovo she is given a beehive as a gift, and starts on a beekeeping apprenticeship with an unknown family; through their friendship and history she begins to understand her new home. Her apprenticeship leads her to other beekeepers too: retired guerrilla fighters, victims of human trafficking, political activists, a women's beekeeping group who teach her how to dance, and the Prime Minister himself. She dons a beekeeper's veil, sees the bees safely through winter, manages to use a smoker, learns about wicker skeps, gets stung, harvests her honey and drizzles it over everything. In between, she starts working at Pristina s forgotten Ethnological Museum, runs a project in a restored stone house below the Accursed Mountains and falls in love with a country she had known only as a war.

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9781904955900

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Reviews

'A sheer delight; a beguiling, bittersweet story of a lively love affair with a traditional world, as ancient as apiculture, in transition to new nationhood.' ----The Times 'A wonderful writer about Pristina - Interesting and different.' -----Matthew Parris 'Enthralling... a hugely affectionate picture of the everyday lives of ordinary Kosovans and a wonderful evocation of a place that most of us know so little about. Food, above all honey, is the key that unlocks the doors between cultures. And I have every intention of trying some of the recipes.' ----Sophie Grigson

Author Information

Elizabeth Gowing's translation of the biography of Yugoslavia's longest-held political prisoner, Adem Demaci, was recently published by Rrokullia Press. She is a regular columnist for Prishtina Insight newspaper and is currently working on Edith and I, a biography of the Edwardian anthropologist and Balkan traveller, Edith Durham. Her website is www.elizabethgowing.com.

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