At the beginning of December this year, as Christmas fast approaches, the most widely translated Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov gave the start to his “small personal campaign” – Gift a book for Christmas. For 15 years, the author of Natural Novel, Physics of Sorrow and Time Shelter has been reminding us of the gesture, imbued with a special kind of aesthetics and ecology of the spirit, of making our loved ones the most personal kind of gift there is – a story. Words, written by someone else, but conveying our own message.

The Bulgarian Consulate General in New York gave its support to the initiative and now every Bulgarian paying a visit to the consulate until the end of the year is able to choose a present from its library, following the principle “take a book, share a book”. At the beginning of September, Georgi Gospodinov opened the new literary season at the New York Public Library with a premiere of the US edition of Time Shelter, translated by Angela Rodel. German, Italian, Polish, French, Danish, Dutch and Turkish are just some of the languages in which Time Shelter has been translated in just 18 months. And as the year draws to an end, a time when we look back to make our recapitulations, a writer from Bulgaria has been earning recognition from different quarters. Angela Rodel’s work is on World Literature Today’s 75 Notable Translations of 2022. Thanks to her, in the time since it appeared in May, the noivel has become one of the most talked-about books by a Bulgarian author in the English-speaking world. The British The Times compares Georgi Gospodinov with Orwell, describing the novel as “a warning to Europe and Putin”. “I wrote (and deleted) about the blending of times, when memory, personal and collective, packs up and leaves. About Gaustin’s new obsession and the discrete monster of the past coming towards us. About the time shelters we are building, now that the one we have is no longer home to us,” Georgi Gospodinov himself says about the storyline.

A few days ago, The Guardian included the novel in its list of best fiction of the year. Time Shelter is also on the New Yorker’s list of Best Books of 2022 So Far as its editors and critics made their selection of “the most captivating, notable, brilliant, thought-provoking, and talked-about books”. And side by side with the names of Nobel prize winners like Halldór Kiljan Laxness, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Ferit Orhan Pamuk, Louise Elisabeth Glück, we find the name of Georgi Gospodinov. Just a few days ago, Time Shelter, translated by Hasine Şen, was selected among the best books of 2022 in Turkey.

Today, Friday, 16 December, Georgi Gospodinov himself made an announcement, on social media, of “small joys in these troubled times” – that Bavaria’s public broadcasting service has chosen Time Shelter to be the first of its selection of seven books of the year, saying that “the most prophetic book comes from Bulgaria…” Just a reminder that in October 2021, Time Shelter won the prestigious European award Strega in Italy, making Georgi Gospodinov the first writer from Eastern Europe to have received it. The official presentation of the Italian edition of his book of poetry Letters to Guatsin, translated by Giuseppe Dell'Agata, took place a week ago in Rome,

And going back to the “small personal campaign” of the most widely-translated Bulgarian author, let us now join him and say that the more people give books for Christmas, the more we can be sure no one is going to take the magic out of the festive season…

“Because Christmas is not a promotion, it is a gift, a miracle. And miracles are something we cannot live without. Especially today, especially here,” Georgi Gospodinov, 2007.

• Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov presents his latest novel "Time Shelter" in New York

Compiled by Vessela Krasteva

Photos: Facebook/Georgi Gospodinov, Consulate General, New York