Georgi Gospodinov becomes first-ever Bulgarian winner of the International Booker Prize

published on 5/24/23 9:16 AM

Georgi Gospodinov and translator Angela Rodel upon receiving the Booker Prize for the novel Time Shelter

Photo: EPA/BGNES

Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov and translator Angela Rodel have become winners of the 2023 Booker international literary prize with the novel Time Shelter. This is the first Bulgarian novel to win the prestigious award. The distinction is given to fiction novels from around the world that have been translated into English, and the £50,000 prize is split equally between the author and the translator.

The novel Time Shelter tells the story of a clinic that offers an experimental treatment for Alzheimer's. To trigger patients' memories, it recreates the atmosphere of past decades down to the smallest detail. But over time, healthy people began to come to the clinic, seeking salvation from the horrors of modern life.

‘It is a novel that invites reflection and vigilance as much as it moves us, because the language – sensitive and precise – manages to capture, in a Proustian vein, the extreme fragility of the past. The translator, Angela Rodel, has succeeded brilliantly in rendering this style and language, rich in references and deeply free", says the French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani, chair of the judges for the International Booker Prize 2023.

Born in 1968, Bulgarian novelist and poet Gospodinov is the most internationally recognized contemporary Bulgarian author. His works have been translated into 25 languages. Shortly before midnight, Bulgarian time, at the award ceremony in London, Georgi Gospodinov congratulated all Bulgarians on the holiday of May 24, calling it a "miracle of language".

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