Name: Anima: A Wild Pastoral
ISBN: 9781529933413

Kapka Kassabova

Over the course of one summer, Kapka Kassabova lives with perhaps the last true pastoralists in Europe.

She joins the epic seasonal movement of vast herds of sheep, along with shepherds and dogs, to find pasture in the mountains. As she becomes attuned to the sacrifices inherent in this isolated existence, Kassabova finds herself drawn deeper into the tangled relationships at the heart of this small community.

Anima is a spellbinding portrayal of the human–animal interdependence in pastoral life, and a plea for a different way of living – one where we might all begin to heal our broken relationship with the natural world.

Anima: A Wild Pastoral

Cassandra Tang

Giving your book to people who didn’t ask for it is like giving advice. It is politely received and discarded.

Like a word that’s not a word, it is a continuous movement of grass and light, of animals and the sun’s orbit. The wind is alive like a being. The wind is the world’s soul passing over me and its message is this, the world’s soul. Anima.

Patience is a forgotten art, like shepherding. Most people don’t have any patience at all. The only thing that makes waiting bearable anywhere is to scroll through your phone.

When you’re down, you want to go up. When you’re up, you want to come down. You like this mountain, but you yearn to reach the other one. You need both, the variety nourishes you, it makes you alive. There’s a language that goes with it.

An anthropologist said: one of the basic human needs is to have someone wonder where you are when you are late coming home.

They say: to quit an addiction, change your environment.

A beautifully written story that offers honest and poetic insights into the nomadic lifestyle of pastoralists. 