Georgi Gospodinov
Georgi Gospodinov (1968) is the International Booker Prize winning author of Time Shelter for 2023. The novel is published in more than 30 languages. „It’s the most exquisite kind of literature, on our perception of time and its passing, written in a masterful and totally unpredictable style,“ according to Olga Tockarczuk, the Nobel Prize winning writer. 'Could not be more timely... A writer of great warmth as well as skill' (Guardian). In 2022, the novel was New Yorker, Guardian and Financial Times book of the year.
Gospodinov began as a poet in the early 1990s with two books immediately noticed and awarded with national literary prizes in his native Bulgaria. He became internationally known with his Natural Novel (1999) published already in 25 languages. The New Yorker described it as an “anarchic, experimental debut”; according to The Guardian, it is “both earthy and intellectual”; Le Courrier (Geneve) calls it “a machine for stories.”
His next novel, The Physics of Sorrow (2012), is published in 20 languages so far. It won the international Jan Michalski Prize 2016 and was finalist for the American PEN Translation Prize, Premio Strega Europeo, etc. According to The New Yorker, “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…”
In La Reppublika Gospodinov was described as “A Proust coming from the East”; according to Alberto Manguel, Gospodinov is “one of the most important European writers today”.
Gospodinov has several books of short stories, including And Other Stories, And All Turned Moon, All Our Bodies. Blind Vaysha, a short animation based on a Gospodinov’s short story of the same name (dir. Theodore Ushev), was an Academy Award (Oscar) nominee for 2017.
Gospodinov’s works include poetry, nonfiction, theatre plays (The Apocalypse Comes at 6 PM), a graphic novel The Eternal Fly, a libretto for Space Opera, scripts, social videos The Slap Factory and Future Cancelled, and many other projects.
His complex narratives are engaged with the memory of the recent Eastern-European past and the present anxieties of Europe and the world. Deeply human, they manage at the same time to reach beyond humanity striving for a much wider, non-anthropocentric empathy. According to The New Yorker, “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…”
Gospodinov is associate professor at the Institute for Literature, BAS, Sofia. He teaches creative writing, media and literature courses at the Sofia University. He was awarded a number of fellowships among which at the Cullman Center (NYPL) and at the Wissenschaftskolleg (Berlin).
georgigospodinov.com
Some international and national awards
Winner
Booker International, London 2023
Premio Strega Europeo, Italy, 2021
Zinklar Prize for Best Short Fiction, Denmark, 2021
Usedom Prize for European literature, Germany, 2021
International Ceppo Award, Italy, 2021
Best Novel in the Year, Bulgaria, 2021
National Literary Award Bulgarian Novel of the Year, 2021
Central European Angelus Award, Poland, 2019
Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, Switzerland, 2016
Books in English
Time Shelter, translated by Angela Rodel, Liveright/Norton, 2022
Physics of Sorrow, translated by Angela Rodel, Open Letter Books, 2015
The Story Smuggler, translated by Dan Gunn and Kristina Kovacheva, Cahier series, Sylph Editions, 2016
And Other Stories, tr. by A. Levitin and M. Levy, Northwestern University Press, 2007
Natural Novel, translated by Zornitsa Hristova, Dalkey Archive Press, 2005