Borrowed Land

A Highland Story

By: Kapka Kassabova

Narrated by: Kirsty Strain

Brought to you by Penguin.

An extraordinary portrait of the Scottish Highlands: this is an epic and urgent story of destruction and renewal, told through unforgettable encounters with its people.

This is the story of a Scottish glen and its inhabitants, and of how I came to call it my glen.

From the powerful rivers that bring life and prosperity, to the Pictish cairns, undisturbed for centuries and the meadows of bluebells, from which deer emerge, god-like, in a flash, Kapka Kassabova reveals a world that has been abused, but remains achingly beautiful and alive.

In the Highlands, centuries-old connections between the land, nature and people have been, and continue to be, shaken by the forces of colonialism, industry, depopulation and private property speculation.

Borrowed Land tells the stories of those who are working against this disconnect: the last true Highlanders, fighting to preserve their home.

'Brave, intense, unexpected, lyrical and troubling' Rory Stewart

'A poetic and haunting anatomy of what happens when a world is addicted to extraction' James Crawford

'Stark and moving. A hymn, a howl and a call to action all at once' Ben Rawlence

'A brilliant, daring and urgent account’ Sally Huband

© Kapka Kassabova 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Critic reviews

Brave, intense, unexpected, lyrical and troubling (Rory Stewart)

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)

To read Borrowed Land by Kapka Kassabova is to understand what it means to slip one’s skin and become a river, a forest or a mountain... This mesmeric and intimate testimony becomes a defiant dreamlike thrum of resistance to corporate greed... Brilliant, daring and urgent (Sally Huband)

This is a hugely important, and timely, book. It has filled me with anger and despair, as well as a good deal of hope (Angus Peter Campbell)

Essential and revelatory reading. It's full of quiet rage on behalf of the old land – and the health and dignity of the humans that live there – being destroyed by industrial capitalism. It's a wake-up call that exposes the great lie of a profit-driven corporate decarbonisation. Kapka's writing is ferocious and instinctive, and my copy is full of underlined passages and folded corners, so much is there to treasure. (Kerry Andrew)

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)

I couldn't quite understand how something which chronicles such terrible destruction could be quite so uplifting. It is because Kassabova has hit on some fire at the centre of life. Love is attention, and here is the most beautiful portrayal and expression of love (Horatio Clare)

A devastating account of change in one part of the Scottish Highlands - the death of valleys and their people, the death of forests and rivers and how extraction and energy generation has ripped through this place. Such powerful writing, such anguish and love. Kapka Kassabova has written another brilliant book. (Philip Marsden)

An important and deeply tragic account of yet another phase in the long history of the exploitation of the Highlands and the complete powerlessness of the actual inhabitants, this time in the name of renewable energy, a disturbing paradox (Madeleine Bunting)

Culloden, in 1746, ended the old life of the Highlands. But Kassabova brilliantly shows, in this fierce, tender, plangent and compellingly readable book, that Culloden itself continues: that there are new and more sinister invaders, and that the clans must rally once more. (Charles Foster)