Bio

Georgi Gospodinov (1968) is a Bulgarian poet, writer, and playwright. One of the foremost European writers of today, says Alberto Manguel.

Gospodinov’s debut novel, Natural Novel (1999), was published in 23 languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Icelandic. The New Yorker described it as an "anarchic, experimental debut". According to The Guardian, it is "both earthy and intellectual", Le Courrier (Geneve) called it "a machine for stories".

Gospodinov’s second novel, The Physics of Sorrow (2012), won several national awards for best fiction, including the National Award for Best Novel of the Year (2013). The book was the winner of the Central European Angelus Award (2019) and the Jan Michalski Prize (2016) and a finalist for four international prizes in Italy and Germany: Premio Strega Europeo, Premio Gregor von Rezzori, Brüke Berlin Preis, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt Preis. The novel was widely reviewed in Europe and the US. "Georgi’s real quest in The Physics of Sorrow is to find a way to live with sadness, to allow it to be a source of empathy and salutary hesitation…", wrote Garth Greenwell for The New Yorker. According to NZZ, "Georgi Gospodinov rises above the lowlands of novelistic commercialism and convention, saving not only himself, but literature as well – and with it, the entire world". The American edition of the novel was shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize 2016 and the Best Translated Book Awards (BTBA). The Physics of Sorrow was published in 18 languages, including German, English, French, Italian, and Arabic.

He has also published four books of short stories, the first, And Other Stories (2001), and the last, All Our Bodies. Ultra-Short Stories (2018). Blind Vaysha, a short animation (dir. Theo Ushev) based on Gospodinov’s short story, was an Academy Award nominee in 2017.

Gospodinov has written two plays — D.J. (an abbreviation of Don Juan) and The Apocalypse Comes at 6 PM (2010) — both of which received national awards for best dramatic text of the year. His tireless experiments with different genres include the libretto for Space Opera (2015, Poznan, composer A. Novak), the graphic novel The Eternal Fly (together with the artist N. Toromanov), and the collection of essays The Invisible Crises.

He has lived in different places where his books have taken him. In 2017/2018, he spent a year at the Cullman Center (New York Public Library) in New York. In 2019/2020, he was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg (Wiko) in Berlin.

His third novel is Time Shelter. Published in April 2020 amidst the quarantine and the peak of the pandemic, it topped the best-selling books charts in Bulgaria. The novel won one of the most significant European awards - the Strega European Prize (2021). In 2023, Time Shelter, translated in English by Angela Rodel, won the International Booker Prize. 

Death and the Gardener is the latest, highly personal novel by Gospodinov.