Reality intrudes on paradise

Kapka Kassabova. Photo / Alastair Smith.

Paradise is a tenuous concept. The characters in Kapka Kassabova's third novel, Villa Pacifica, attempt to establish a haven for neglected wildlife in the South American rainforest. However, grim reality inevitably intrudes upon their utopian vision.

"There's quite a long tradition in places like Paraguay of people like European socialists washing up and trying to create these communes," says Kassabova. "But that's not what my story is based on; it's based on a more contemporary idea of an eco-resort, where everything starts out with good intentions."

Villa Pacifica's exact location is never specified in the book, but Kassabova reveals that it was inspired by Ecuador. "I've been there a couple of times and I know it quite well," she says, although the villa itself is fictional. "I invented this kind of eco-resort and shelter for rescued, trafficked animals. It's an amalgamation of some real places I've visited in South America. The issue of trafficked animals is unavoidable and quite painful. It's quite shocking to see what can be done to animals."

Born in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, the 37-year-old moved to Auckland as a teenager. Published in 1998, her inaugural poetry collection All Roads Lead to the Sea won the New Zealand Studies Authority Jesse McKay Award for Best First Book of Poetry. Her debut novel Reconnaissance followed in 1999, scooping more plaudits including the Best First Book award in the South East Asia and South Pacific section of the 2000 Commonwealth Prize.

Kassabova shifted back to Europe six years ago and these days lives in Edinburgh. Villa Pacifica is set in the Southern Hemisphere but in a very different environment to her adoptive homeland. "It's kind of a Pacific story but in a very indirect way," she says. "The vision of the Pacific in the story is very different to the one we are used to seeing in New Zealand."

Villa Pacifica resembles a microcosm of society with inhabitants from all around the world. "These places exist," says Kassabova. "There are thousands of them where independent travellers, backpackers and well meaning adventurers can rock up and meet."

The novel's characters range from sporty Australian flight attendants Liz and Tim to obnoxious American Max, who cynically attempts to buy the villa to turn it into a holiday camp. "It's about different people's visions and I try to give all my characters a voice," says Kassabova. "I hope I don't prefer one character over another but clearly some characters are more likeable than others. Everybody is flawed."

She compares Villa Pacifica to Alex Garland's 1996 bestseller The Beach. "There's something similar going on there, but it's quite an archetypal scenario. It starts out as an idyllic situation but slowly deteriorates into something nightmarish as personalities start to unravel and people express themselves more honestly."

Villa Pacifica's Spanish owners Mikel and Lucia's attempt to establish their own small bit of paradise is initially well meaning but doomed. "They represent that desire to find a place in the world to call your own," says Kassabova. "That sometimes works out wonderfully and sometimes it goes horribly wrong. They're good people who somewhere along the way have got lost."

The novel also brings to mind post-colonial writers like Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene. "They're amongst my favourite writers because they explored similar themes," says Kassabova, who cites Sheltering Sky author Paul Bowles as a specific influence. "His chief obsession was with how these kinds of places, mainly in North Africa but sometimes in South America, impact upon our sense of self."

She also drew inspiration from The King is Alive, a 2000 Dogme-style film by Danish director Thomas Jensen about a group of passengers who stage an impromptu performance of King Lear after their bus breaks down in the African desert. "I saw it towards the end of the writing of the novel and it was the kind of thing that really resonates with me," says Kassabova. "I've always been really interested in what happens to people in unfamiliar places. When the unexpected happens, strange energies are unleashed."

The novel centres around Ute, a 39-year-old travel guide-writer, who suffers from eczema. She journeys to Villa Pacifica with her husband Jerry. Unfortunately, their relationship is threatened as they are struggling to conceive their first child.

"She's not a particularly self-loving character," says Kassabova. "From the beginning, she was always quite well formed in my mind. But with all the characters, I wanted them to bring their own preoccupations and issues with them, as we all do when we go travelling, even those of us who insist they're travellers, not tourists. They say that proudly so fair enough. But when most people go travelling, it's an attempt to leave all their unresolved problems behind and it's precisely those unresolved issues and desires that eventually rise to the surface."

Like the author herself, Ute possesses ties to several countries, as her father was Finnish while she grew up in Britain. Pronounced "Ooo-tey", her German name leads to further confusion. "There are more and more of us cultural freaks," laughs Kassabova. "It's increasingly becoming the norm and it's not just Ute who represents that but some of the minor characters as well like Luis, the Ecuadorian musician who now lives in Europe. People with mixed cultural allegiances are becoming more common and their identities can fracture as a result so they start searching for a sense of belonging."

Kassabova explored her childhood growing up in communist Bulgaria in Street Without a Name, which was published in Britain two years ago by Portobello Books. It garnered much praise including from the Guardian, which hailed it as "a profound meditation on the depth of change triggered by the events of 1989 throughout Eastern Europe".

Kassabova is unsure whether Villa Pacifica will be picked up outside of New Zealand but Portobello have already purchased the rights to her next memoir, Tango: Twelve Minutes of Love. "Things are hard for fiction at the moment so it might be a sign of the times or it might just be a sign of my own development as a writer. Portobello have been totally behind the new book from the start and everybody is excited - so no pressure on me."

Due in 2012, the book explores Kassabova's passion for the classic Latin dance, which has taken her all over the world, including Argentina and Berlin. "Not to overuse that word but it's an obsession," she laughs. "I've been interested in tango for the last 10 years. I first started dancing it in Auckland so that's where the story starts at the turn of the millennium, and it goes on from there."

She has no plans for a new novel. "At the moment, I'm totally engrossed in the tango book so I can't think ahead of that," says Kassabova, who is now just as comfortable writing non-fiction as she is poetry or prose. "Early on in my writing life, I only wrote fiction but first with Street Without a Name and now Tango, I feel at ease with non-fiction now, which is almost like a different state of mind."

Kapka Kassabova

* Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1973. Emigrated to England, then New Zealand in 1992.

* Her poetry collection, All Roads Lead to the Sea (1997), won the NZSA Jessie Mackay award for best first book of poetry.

* Her novel, Reconnaissance (1999), won best first book award in the South East Asia and South Pacific section of the 2000 Commonwealth Writers Prize. Her memoir Street Without a Name was published in 2008.

* Clive James is a fan, writing that she had "mentally lived out of a suitcase" since she was a little girl. Kapka Kassabova was born in Bulgaria and moved to New Zealand as a teen. Picture / Alastair Smith

Villa Pacifica (Penguin $39) is out on Monday.