In prose as elegant and seductive as the tango itself, Kapka Kassabova leads us on a journey over time and across continents, above all a journey of the heart. - Aminatta Forna This is more than a book about dancing. It is about people, places, movement, love, trouble, a journey. I was gripped. Read it and dance. - Monique Roffey This mix of travel writing, personal experience and history is something that Kassabova has done before and she's frankly brilliant at it. [This] is sharp, clever and engaging, a wonderful mix of self-deprecating humour and genuine insight. - Independent o n Sunday A mesmeric memoir of love, lust and tango .
Kassabova relishes the painful blisters as much as the seductive bliss. - M arie Claire Travel writing is dead. Long live great travel writing. Part travelogue, part memoir, this is a sexy step through the myths around tango and its physical, emotional and psychological layers. You will want to learn. - GQ Kapka Kassabova is consumed by her subject, and her book is all the better for it . Warm, witty and deftly written, it's an unapologetically personal tale, but in it Kassabova reveals so much more about tango's allure and enigma than any more distanced study might. - **** Time Out [Kassabova] skilfully weaves her evolution as a dancer around the history and meaning of the dance as well as around her private dramas .
Her narrative, bubbly and brisk as it is, will entertain fellow dancers and fans of tango music and fellow wanderers pursuing similar ends. - TLS This is a strangely moving book, Kassabova's sensibility running throughout the pages like a melancholy tango melody. The author is intelligent, sensitive and romantic, and colours the content with her own elegiac perspective. Nothing is under- or over-stated. Kassabova is expert at interspersing history with her personal life, the movement like the intricate dance steps of the tango. One seems to reinforce and shed light on the other [and] she has a perfect sense of timing. But above all this book is. an entertaining hymn to her individual addiction: to tango and to romantic love.
- Scottish Review of Books Kassabova wears her obvious intellect lightly and her writing style is akin to sitting across a wine glass from your most entertaining friend . I reach the last page with a pang of sadness as I realise that, while I have sated my curiosity about tango, I'll miss this lively voice. - Herald The depictions of place and character are sumptuous and intense, and overall Twelve Minutes of Love manages to be hilarious and moving, poignant and occasionally sublime. - Big Issue This is a very good book indeed. She never overburdens her narrative and yet gives us a clear account of the history of tango and her own, often tear-filled, emotional journey on and off the dance floor. Kassabova gets the drug-like quality of tango across, with ferocious vividness. I find myself liking [her] a lot. - Independent In utterly fluid prose, Kassabova brings new heights of perception to the twists and twines of tango.
A very, very fine book. - Mavis Cheek Kassabova's prose is steeped in the exquisite melancholy the Latin Americans call duende. - Guardian.