Georgi Gospodinov Georgiev (born 7 January 1968) is a Bulgarian writer, poet and playwright. His novel Time Shelter received the 2023 International Booker Prize, shared with translator Angela Rodel, as well as the Strega European Prize. His novel The Physics of Sorrow received the Jan Michalski Prize and the Angelus Award. His works have been translated into 25 languages. Gospodinov writes complex narratives, based on the recent past of Eastern Europe and present anxieties across Europe and worldwide. His works often blend poetry into fiction and irony. 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…"

Personal life and education

Gospodinov was born 7 January 1968 in Yambol, Bulgaria. He majored in Bulgarian studies at Sofia University. He received his PhD in New Bulgarian Literature from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. His father died of cancer on 20 December 2023; Gospodinov's 2024 book, The Gardener and Death, was written based on this experience.

Career

Novels

Gospodinov began writing poetry in the early 1990s, publishing two books Lapidarium (Лапидариум, 1992) and The cherry of a people (Черешата на един народ, 1996) which received national literary prizes in his native Bulgaria. He became internationally known by his Natural Novel, which was published in 21 languages. Described by The New Yorker as an "anarchic, experimental debut", and by The Guardian as "both earthy and intellectual", the novel explores the life of a young writer in post-communism Bulgaria. Gospodinov's 2001 collection of short stories And Other Stories was longlisted for Frank O'Connor Award and translated into multiple languages. It contains the story "Blind Vaysha", which was turned into a short animation film of the same name. He co-authored the graphic novel The Eternal Fly, published in 2010, with the artist Nikola Toromanov. His second novel, The Physics of Sorrow (2012), won the Bulgarian National Award for Best Novel of the Year 2013 and was translated into multiple languages. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung praised the novel as "a gorgeous work that should definitely be read". According to Neue Zurcher Zeitung "with Physics of Sorrow Gospodinov launches not only the Bulgarian literature but also himself in the European writers' first league." In 2014, the Italian edition of the novel was shortlisted for the Strega European Prize; the German edition was a finalist for Internationaler Literaturpreis – Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Brücke Berlin Literatur- und Übersetzerpreis. From January to June 2019, Gospodinov was writer-in-residence of the and the in Zurich. His novel Time Shelter, first published in 2020, has also been translated into multiple languages. It was described by author Olga Tokarczuk as "the most exquisite kind of literature, on our perception of time and its passing, written in a masterful and totally unpredictable style." Newspaper La Repubblica described Gospodinov as "a Proust coming from the East", while author Sandro Veronesi described Time Shelter as "a powerful and brilliant novel: clear-sighted, foreboding, enigmatic. A novel in which the future gives way like a rotten beam and the past rushes in like a flood." For Time Shelter, Gospodinov was awarded the Strega European Prize in 2021 and the English translation by Angela Rodel received the International Booker Prize in 2023.

Films

Gospodinov wrote two screenplays for two short feature films. His screenplay for Omelette received an Honorable Mention at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. The 2016 animated short Blind Vaysha by Bulgarian-Canadian filmmaker Theodore Ushev is based on a Gospodinov short story. It was nominated for the Best Animated Short at the 89th Academy Awards. In 2019, Ushev released another animated short film adaptation of Gospodinov's work, The Physics of Sorrow.

Awards and nominations