A prestigious award for a Bulgarian author
Source：Taiwan Trade Center, Sofia
From：Taiwan Trade Center, Sofia
Update Time：2023/06/12
Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov won the Booker literary prize with his book “Time Shelter”, translated into English by Angela Rodel.
The news of this was spread on the eve of May 24, the holiday on which Slavic writing is celebrated and which enjoys respect not only in Bulgaria, but among the Slavic peoples in general. This is not the first international award for Gospodinov, but it is the first prized international distinction, as well as the first Bulgarian book nominated for the Booker.
The book tells the story of a special hospital created where people can, by recreating individual historical periods on individual floors, return to those periods of their lives in which they were, or assume they would be, happiest. The questions of nostalgia, development and regression in society, caused by the lack of inner peace, are touched upon. Since 2014 literary prize has two sections, for books written in English and for books translated from the author's language into English.
This year, in addition to Bulgarian, there was also a book originally written in Catalan, a debut language for the prize. Novelist Leyla Slimani chaired the jury for this year's award, and she was joined on this year's panel by William Blacker, one of Britain's leading literary translators from the Ukrainian language; Malaysian Booker shortlisted writer Tan Twan Eng; Parul Sehgal, writer and critic at The New Yorker; and Frederic Studeman, literary editor of the Financial Times.
Previous Booker winners include Salman Rushdie with Midnight's Children, Kazuo Ishiguro for The Remains of the Day and Michael Ondaatje for The English Patient. In addition to prestige, the prize also has a monetary dimension – 50 thousand pounds, which is shared between the author and the English translator. “Time Shelter” has been released in an audio version as well, read by British Actor Toby Stephens.