The Gardener and Death is the new book by Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov, which will be on sale in book stores on August 27, Janet 45 publishing house said here on Friday.
This is the author's first book after Time Shelter, which is the first Bulgarian-language novel to both be nominated for and win the International Booker Prize in 2023. The book's press launch will be on September 1 during the Apollonia Arts Festival in Sozopol (on the Black Sea) and will be attended by the author and actor Vladimir Penev, the publishers said.
The book tells both a merciful and a merciless story of a father, a son and a last dawn, Janet 45 said.
According to Georgi Gospodinov, the book is a story about departing fathers in a departing world. "About these tragic smokers, often absent, clinging to the cigarette, floating in other waters and clouds. For my father, who carried tons of the past on his shoulders and never stopped telling it. This is not a book about death, but a book about a life that is fading," the author points out.
Georgi Gospodinov is the author of books of poetry and prose, including Lapidarium, The Cherry Three of a Nation, Letters to Gaustin, And Other Stories, published in French in 2003, Selected Stories, The Invisible Crises, The Inventory Book of Socialism, among others.
Georgi Gospodinov's first novel, Natural Novel, was published in 1999. The same year the novel received the special prize at the second National Competition "Razvitie" for a contemporary Bulgarian novel. Over the years, Natural Novel has been reprinted many times and translated into more than 20 languages, including French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Czech, etc.The book has had its theatrical version staged by the Sfumato Theatre. His second novel The Physics of Sorrow was presented at the Apollonia Arts Festival on 3 September 2011.
Time Shelter is the author's third novel, published in 2020. In 2021, it was selected as the Bulgarian novel of the year in the National Endowment Fund's 13 Centuries of Bulgaria competition.
The Gardener and Death is Gospodinov's fourth novel.
(BTA)
The novel "Time Shelter" by Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov is the 2023 winner of the International Booker Prize. The winner was announced by the jury chair, prize-winning French-Moroccan novelist Leila Slimani at a ceremony in London on May 23. Gospodinov shares the prize with the novel's translator, Angela Rodel. "Time Shelter" becomes the first novel originally published in Bulgarian to win the prize. It was also the first Bulgarian book to be nominated.
"It's an honour to be here. Thank you to the Booker Foundation for supporting this book to be translated. Thank you to the jury for appreciating a novel about memory and time and the weaponisation of nostalgia. Thank you also to all the nominees - your books are wonderful. Huge thanks to my translator Angela Rodel, who built this clinic of the past in English", Gospodinov said after the award ceremony.
He noted that he had won the prize on the eve of May 24 - "the day of the Cyrilic alphabet, the day of writing and language," he said. "Happy holiday, happy miracle of language", the author said, speaking this sentence in Bulgarian.
"Our winner, "Time Shelter", is a brilliant novel, full of irony and melancholy. It is a profound work that deals with a very contemporary question: What happens to us when our memories disappear? Georgi Gospodinov succeeds marvellously in dealing with both individual and collective destinies and it is this complex balance between the intimate and the universal that convinced and touched us", Slimani said about the winning novel.
She called it "a great novel about Europe, a continent in need of a future, where the past is reinvented, and nostalgia is a poison". "It offers us a perspective on the destiny of countries like Bulgaria, which have found themselves at the heart of the ideological conflict between the West and the communist world".
(BTA)
The novel "Time Shelter" has been named among six novels short-listed for the 2023 International Booker Prize. No other Bulgarian-language book has been nominated for the prestigious literary award.
Gospodinov's novel is translated by Angela Rodel.
The panel of judges is chaired by the prize-winning French-Moroccan novelist Leila Slimani and also includes Uilleam Blacker, one of Britain’s leading literary translators from Ukrainian; Tan Twan Eng, the Booker-shortlisted Malaysian novelist; Parul Sehgal, staff writer and critic at the New Yorker; and Frederick Studemann, Literary Editor of the Financial Times.
The jury defined "Time Shelter" as "an inventive novel with an unexpectedly cheeky tone." The novel, according to them, raises again the old questions about "the danger of selective memory, trauma and nostalgia, which can conquer society and become cancer".
The International Booker Prize highlights fiction from all five continents, translated into English.
The winner of the 2023 Booker will be announced on May 23.
"Time Shelter" of Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov is on the longlist for the 2023 International Booker Prize.
No other Bulgarian-language book has been nominated for the International Booker Prize. Gospodinov's novel is translated by Angela Rodel.
The longlist includes 13 works selected from among 134 submissions. The shortlist will be announced on April 18 during the London Book Fair and it will include six of the longlist entrants. The winner will be named at a London gala on May 23.
"Natural Novel" by Georgi Gospodinov won the Athens Grand Prix for Literature, the writer said.
Georgi Gospodinov’s name was announced today at a ceremony in the Greek capital. The Bulgarian writer won a competition with authors such as Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke, Julian Barnes, Manuel Villas, Bernardine Evaristo, Booker winner. Gospodinov is the first Bulgarian to be awarded the Athens Prize.
“Natural Novel” is the debut novel by Georgi Gospodinov, published in Bulgaria in 1999. This is the most translated Bulgarian book after the changes, published in over 20 languages around the world.
In Greece, the novel was published last year by Alexandra Ioannidou at Icaros Publishing House.
The Athens Prize is the fifth international award Georgi Gospodinov has received for his books this year.
The novel Time Shelter by renowned Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov topped a prestigeous Italian ranking for translated books, reported L'Indiscreto. It won the most votes in a poll among 620 Italian critics, culture journalists, writers and translators, who were asked to name their favourite translated book published in the outgoing year.
Gospodinov is the only Bulgarian in the ranking. The Top Three also includes Romania's Mircea Cartares with the novel Solenoide and Jonathan Franzen with Crossroads.
Almost all of Gospodinov's books have been published in Italy and enjoy significant interest among readers and critics alike. The top ranking for Time Shelter is also a recognition for the work of Giuseppe DellТAgata, who translated the book, and the Voland publishing house.
2021 was a very good year for Gospodinov, who received several at home and abroad, including the yearly Danish literature award Zinklar for his "Blind Vaysha and other stories", this year's Usedom Literature Prize and the Novel of the Year award of the 13 Centuries of Bulgaria Endowment Fund.
The L'Indiscreto ranking is updated three times a year, in the middle of February, May and October for best Italian books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and comics, plus a special year-end vote on foreign literature. (BTA)
More info: https://www.indiscreto.org/classifica-di-qualita-libri-in-traduzione-del-2021/
For the 15th year in a row, renowned Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov urges Bulgarians to choose books for Christmas gifts. Entitled "Give a Book for Christmas", the initiative is not backed up by any organizations or sponsors. "It is my little personal campaign," he said in a Facebook post.
Gospodinov is an internationally recognized poet, writer, and playwright, one of the most translated Bulgarian authors after 1989. He gained his international acclaim with the book "Natural Novel", written in 1999 and translated in more than 20 languages since 2005.
In 2007, Gospodinov wrote a short article for Dnevnik.bg, where he made public his Book for Christmas initiative for the very first time. Since then, thousands of Bulgarians have followed his message to gift their loved ones with a book for Christmas instead of the typical holiday presents.
"My little personal campaign is for those who are wondering how not to gift the same perfume, scarf or accessory as last year", Gospodinov wrote fifteen years ago.
This year he encourages those who are little engaged with literature in their daily lives, to consider taking part in the initiative.
In a Facebook comment on December 1, 2021, the writer thanked everybody who embraced his initiative saying that by giving a book, one gives history, meaning and miracles.
Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov is the winner of the most prestigious Italian literary award "Premio Strega Europeo". He is the first Bulgarian and the first writer from Eastern Europe to receive it. The award was presented at a ceremony in Turin on 17 October as the final highlight of the International Book Fair - one of Italy's biggest literary events.
The novel "Time Shelter" won in competition with four other books by prestigious authors such as Goncourt winner Hervé Le Tellier, German writer Anne Weber – winner of the German Prize for Literature, Romanian legend Ana Blandiana. Georgi Gospodinov's book was chosen by a jury of 20 Italian writers who were Strega winners and finalists over the years. "Time Shelter" came out in Italy in June published by Voland and translated by Giuseppe Dell Agata, who was also honored for his translation work.
Italy's most prestigious literary prize the Strega was founded soon after the war, in 1947. It’s reputation was built by writers like Cesare Pavese, Alberto Moravia, Dino Buzzati, Primo Levi, who were winners over the years. Umberto Eco received the prize in 1981 for his novel "The Name of the Rose".
In 2014 the Strega Foundation decided to create a European edition of the prize - "Premio Strega Europeo". The five nominees each year are chosen among the European writers who have been translated in Italy and have got significant recognition in their native countries.
The novel "Le pays de passe" (Time Shelter) is published by one of the most prominent French publishing houses Gallimard. Marie Vrinat-Nokolov is the translator of the novel.
The Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov is in the company of Joyce, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Pasternak, llosa.
More info: http://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Du-monde-entier/Le-pays-du-passe
On October 1st and 2nd, the Literary Festival Another Story was held for the sixth time at the Pioneer Home Karpos, Skopije. The subtitle of this regional literary forum is "Small Fictions". The festival seeks to affirm experimental literary forms and meetings of literature with other media.
This year's winner of the main prize of Another Story Festival is the prominent Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov.
"A few years ago he made a picture book with his daughter, a very unusual, experimental project quickly published in our country by Ili-ili. That was another argument why he should receive the award. Otherwise he is known for his openness to play and experiment with literature, for example, he has a recent book All My Bodies with very short stories, a great book. Gospodinov also writes poetry, essays and in a way constantly plays between philosophy, literature, word games, pictures, so he is an ideal recipient of the Another Story Award. Besides, he is one of the five or six writers from the region who are the most translated in the West and I think we have made the right decision. We are proud of all the winners and we want to present the region in the best light, but not in a conventional sense - somebody who sells most books. Gospodinov is the most translated, but he is one of those writers who question the role of literature in society and that is important to us - those messages that are more than literature," said Nikola Gelevski, writer and editor-in-chief of the Templum Publishing House that is responsible for the festival.
"Cronorifugio" (the Italian version of "Time Shelter") is shortlisted for Premio Strega Europeo.
This is second nomination for Gospodinov after "The Physics of Sorrow" was shortlisted for the same prize in 2014.
Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov is this year's winner of the Danish literature award Zinklar for his "Blind Vaysha and other stories". A jury of writers and critics said that reading Gospodinov "is like traveling in a time machine offering a mind-expanding journey through the maelstrom of history and the labyrinths of the human mind".
Gospodinov is an internationally recognized poet, writer and playwright, one of the most translated Bulgarian authors after 1989. He gaining his international acclaim with the book "Natural Novel", written in 1999 and translated in 2005.
The Zinklar Prize takes its name from Finn Zinklar (1923-2010), a beloved Danish short story writer who bequeathed most of his fortune to the purpose of the award to promote the short story as a literary genre. It is given every two years since 2013 by the Danish Writers Association to Danish and foreign short story writers. Previous winners of the award are the British writer Julian Barnes, the American storytellers Lidia Davis and Lorrie Moore, and the German novelist Judith Hermann among others.
This year the award will be presented on September 10 at a ceremony in Copenhagen followed by a discussion with the author. The Zinklar Prize comes with a 100,000 DKK package.
The jury wrote in their motives that Gospodinov's short stories "has pushed the boundaries for what a short story can be and how a story can be told". "In terms of style, genre, and creative space, his tales and stories are characterized by an amazing scope, spanning realism and the fantastic, philosophy, crime stories, and science fiction. It is likewise amazing to experience the sudden, shrewdly surprising shifts in pace or mood that can take place from one sentence to the next. [Е] Reading Gospodinov is like bathing in honey," the motives read as quoted by Gospodinov in his Facebook page.
The award is also a recognition for Helle Dalgaard, the Danish translator of "Blind Vaysha and other stories" as well as all of his novels.
BTA / photo: Phelia Barouh
"Time Shelter" won the Novel of the Year National Literary Award given by the Foundation “13 Centuries Bulgaria”.
The aim of these course is to introduce the students the subjectively selected novels among the most important masterpieces of 20th century world literature. Pointing out the main streams and models of modern literature as well as the main models of cultural analysis of literature works is no less important.
Within the framework of the discussion on the selected novel the problem of the very concept of world literature (appeared during 20th and 21st centuries), the status and the role of the translated texts as well as the relation between national (ethnic) and a cosmopolitan culture of the last decades will be focused on. In the context of analyzing every novel, several issues can appear, such as: trans-culturalism, multilingual works, individually understood comparative research, which can mean the analysis of different perspectives of similar philosophical, social, psychological, political and other problems in different literatures (Inter-personal relationships, dissolution of traditional communities, breakdown the traditional cultural and social roles, identity crisis, claims of minorities within the definite communities, modern cities).
During the course the following books will be discussed:
1. Colombia – Gabriel Garcia Marquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude;
2. Argentina - Jorge Luis Borges – Stories;
3. Peru – Mario Vargas Llosa – Death in the Andes;
4. Turkey – Orhan Pamuk – Istanbul: Memories and the City;
5. Spain – Jaume Cabré – Confessions;
6. Great Britain – William Golding – Lord of the Flies;
7. Russia – Aleksander Tierechow – Stone bridge;
8. Poland– Wiesław Myśliwski – Eye of a needle;
9. France – Patrick Modiano – Villa Triste;
10. Italy – Umberto Eco – The name of the rose;
11. Germany – Thomas Bernhard – Woodcutters;
12. Croatia – Dubravka Ugrešić – Fording the Stream of Consciousness;
13. Bulgaria – Georgi Gospodinow – The Physics of Sorrow;
14. USA – Joseph Heller – Catch-22;
15. Japan – Haruki Murakami – A Wild Sheep Chase.
http://informatorects.uw.edu.pl/en/courses/view?prz_kod=3224-PRZEDF4
An interview with Georgi Gospodinov, bTV
Watch the ceremony
Watch Georgi Gospodinov in "My playlist"!
https://bnt.bg/news/pisatelyat-georgi-gospodinov-v-moyat-pleilist-293789news.html
PHOTO: ELENA NENKOVA
Georgi Gospodinov will receive a new high acknowledgement for his contribution to the European literature. The writer will be awarded the Usedom Literary Prize in Germany. Its jury this year is presided by the Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk.
According to the jury statement, Georgi Gospodinov is a significant and unique voice of European literature. His work - fragmentary, full of melancholy and poignancy - draws on the best traditions of Central European prose with its irrepressible need to uncover successive layers of human experience. His way of writing focuses on language as the most perfect tool of knowledge for the ephemeral. The author confidently transcends the boundaries of accepted conventions and creates complex, complete narratives that cannot be categorized into specific genres and currents.
"Natural Novel" (translated by Zornitsa Hristova, "Dalkey Archive Press", 2005) was chosen in Top 100 together with writers like Bulgakov, Milan Kundera, Ivo Andric, Danilo Kis, Dostoevski, Gogol, Hrabal, Celan, Cioran, Dovlatov, Tokarczuk, Ugresic...
"We asked writers, poets, translators and academics to help us pick 100 of the best books from Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia, available in English" (The Calvert Journal).
"The Physics of Sorrow" has already become a part of the European literary canon, wrote Olga Tokarczuk, the Nobel Prize winner. Her words are on the front cover of Georgi Gospodinov’s novel. The news is that after the first print run was over, now the book comes out in Poland for a second time, in hard cover edition. "A thrilling exploration of the myth that happens always and everywhere", Tokarczuk adds.
Two years ago, the Bulgarian author won the Angelus Award, a major European literary prize given in Wroclaw.
Conversation with Georgi Gospodinov, moderator: Ivan Landzhev
Sofia International Literary Festival 2020
...That is why this holiday is beautiful. Because we celebrate the coming of a child. And when there is a child, all of us become children. And fathers and mothers. Each of us is Jesus, each of us is Joseph, each of us is Mary. This is not blasphemy; it is the meaning and the miracle of life. And a miracle is a very personal thing.
The weighty publishing house "Gallimard" has bought the rights of Georgi Gospodinov’s novel "Time Shelter". The book is expected to come out in France next year translated by Marie Vrinat-Nikolov.
The novel has already been sold into 12 languages in the year of its publication. In the US, "Time Shelter" will be published by "Liveright", an imprint of "Norton".
Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel - how to translate sorrow and first reading from "Time Shelter" in English.
Louisiana Literature Festival, Copenhagen, Louisiana Channel 2019
“After all, we are made of books we have read”
Leading Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov - author of the widely translated masterpiece “The Physics of Sorrow’” - here talks about literature’s resilient quality and its close connection to science and empathy.
On Saturday 19 October in Wrocław, Angelus Central European Literature Award was presented for the 14th time, the most important distinction for writers from Central Europe whose books were published in Polish. This year, for the first time the winner is a writer coming from Bulgaria. The jury awarded Georgi Gospodinov for his novel The Physics of Sorrow [Физика на тъгата], published by Wydawnictwo Literackie. He received the award from Mayor of Wrocław Jacek Sutryk.
The winner was selected by the following jury: Mykola Riabchuk (chairman), Marcin Cieński, Urszula Glensk, Ryszard Krynicki, Anna Nasiłowska, Małgorzata Szpakowska and Piotr Śliwiński. Gospodinow received a cheque for 150 000 PLN and a statuette designed by Ewa Rossano. The founder of the Award is the city of Wrocław.
Who is the winner of Angelus 2019?
Born in 1968, Georgi Gospodinov is one of the most often translated Bulgarian writers, whose work was presented in, among others, The New York Times and The New Yorker. He published 7 volumes of poetry and 8 books of prose, including The Physics of Sorrow from 2012, a novel which in Bulgaria sold out in three weeks. The book was translated into Polish by Magdalena Pytlak and published in 2018 by Wydawnictwo Literackie.
During a meeting with Angelus nominees, the author said that The Physics of Sorrow was written as an attempt to answer the question why Bulgaria is considered one of the saddest countries in the world.
“Gospodinov encourages us to reconsider the myth of Minotaur and see that the monster is actually the victim. In his prose, the reality of life in Bulgaria was deliberately universalized and so it is very close to a Polish reader, who can at the same time learn why live snails were being swallowed in the Balkans…”, says Urszula Glensk, member of Angelus jury. “It is also a novel about empathy. A “Bulgarian” One Hundred Years of Solitude. It’s the greatest literature”.
23.11.2016, Montricher, Switzerland
The Jan Michalski Prize for Literature is attributed each year by the Foundation to crown a work of world literature. An original feature of the Prize is its multicultural nature. It is open to authors from the world over and is intended to contribute to their international recognition. The Prize will be awarded for works of fiction or non fiction, irrespective of the language in which it is written. The winner will receive an amount of CHF 50,000, offering the possibility of greater dedication to her or his art.
To make up the Jury, the Foundation has called on exceptional writers who are multilingual, selected for their knowledge of various literary genres, but particularly for their cultural openness.
The Physics of Sorrow stands out by it formal ingeniousness, providing a fragmented narrative made up of a multitude of stories and thoughts, echoes and leaps, of journeys in time and space but also in the Other, exploring what the human condition in a post-modern age can be, full of doubts and crises.
“I am us”, states the book’s prologue: at the heart of a choral production, the storyteller is multiple, gifted with such empathy that he has the ability to enter lives other than his own. In this way he is both a small boy and his adult self in communist and post-communist Bulgaria from 1968 to 2011, he is also his grandfather as a child in 1925 and his grandfather as a soldier in World War II, he is an animal, vegetable, cloud… he is also the Minotaur, his symbolic alter ego throughout this labyrinth novel.
In the meanders of individual and collective memory, Georgi Gospodinov follows a quest for identity which is also that of a country and of Europe as a whole, because sorrow spreads, sorrow migrates. “This is what I want to write about, this sensation of sorrow, the exhaustion of sense, which, on one hand, may be a painful feeling, but which, on the other hand, can also be a luminous feeling. A sad man is a man who thinks; a sad man is a man who contemplates. I think that when a sorrow is told it becomes more luminous”.
The writer therefore collects random memories, tells tales, myths and adds small personal and family stories to greater history; adds lists, images, schemas, citations and references, that play like the brilliantly orchestrated melody of an encyclopaedia. He relates the story to ward off its obliteration by time, to try to encompass a whole, to link his “self” to other “selves” and to cement empathy for shared humanity. His guiding threads, woven with humour, spirit and poetry, follow each other delightfully in a hymn to the powers of literature. The Physics of Sorrow opens a fascinating story chest bringing to life meanings for one’s self and others, for today and tomorrow, “something like an alternative energy source”, as Georgi Gospodinov hopes.
The winner of the Jan Michalski Prize 2016, Georgi Gospodinov will receive an award of CHF 50,000.00 and a work by the Bernese artist Markus Raetz that has been chosen for him: Binocular View, 2001, a photogravure in colour.
