Time Shelter and the International Booker Prize (2023)
In May 2023, Georgi Gospodinov's Time Shelter, translated by Angela Rodel, won the International Booker Prize – one of the most important literary awards in the world. It is the first novel translated from Bulgarian to win the prize. The award is shared between the author and the translator, which is only fair: without Angela, English-language readers would not have understood why everyone in the book wants to go back to the 1970s.
Earlier Recognition
- Premio Strega Europeo (Italy, 2021) for Time Shelter.
- Nobel Prize nomination: in 2022 a Bulgarian writers' organisation sent Gospodinov's nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy keeps its lists of nominees secret for 50 years, so there is no official comment. We, however, know.
Recent Years
- 2025 – Gospodinov received the international Vilenica Prize (Slovenia), which honours Central European authors.
- 2025 – The Gardener and Death came out in English as Death and the Gardener, again translated by Angela Rodel.
- 2026 – Rene Karabash's She Who Remains („Остайница“), translated by Izidora Angel, made the International Booker shortlist. The prize went to the Taiwanese writer Yang Shuang-zi, but two Bulgarian novels in three years have now landed among the best translated books in the world.
What This Means
Bulgarian literature is no longer a “small literature” waiting for someone to notice it. It has translators, publishers and readers in London, New York, Berlin and Rome. And in Sofia's bookshops there are now separate shelves of “Bulgarian authors” that do not look like charity.
There is still no Nobel Prize for a Bulgarian writer. But judging by recent years, the answer to the question “when” now sounds like “we'll see” rather than “never”. And you remember what “we'll see” means in Bulgarian – see the page on expressions.