Time Shelter, written by Georgi Gospodinov and translated by Angela Rodel, has won the International Booker Prize 2023, making it the first novel originally published in Bulgarian to win.
The winner was announced last night at a ceremony at Sky Garden in London, with the £50,000 prize money split equally between the translator and the author.
Time Shelter is about a ‘clinic for the past’ that offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers.
Each floor reproduces a whole decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time.
An unnamed narrator is tasked with collecting items of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to scents, and even afternoon light. But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a ‘time shelter’, hoping to escape the horrors of modern life – a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present.
It has received powerful reviews from critics, with the Guardian saying Gospodinov can “draw out fully dimensional characters from the broken details of their fractured memories.”
Georgi Gospodinov was born in Yambol, Bulgaria, and his work has been translated into 25 different languages. According to the International Booker Prize website, Gospodinov’s novels have been shortlisted for more than a dozen international prizes.
His nominations include the PEN Literary Award for Translation, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori, the Bruecke Berlin Preis, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Literaturpreis – and have won the 2016 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature and the 2019 Angelus Literature Central Europe Prize, among others. He was described by La Repubblica as ‘a Proust from the East’.
In a statement, Gospodinov said: “‘My urge to write this book came from the sense that something had gone awry in the clockworks of time. You could catch the scent of anxiety hanging in the air, you could touch it with your finger.
“After 2016 we seemed to be living in another world and another time. The world’s disintegration with the encroachment of populism and playing the card of the ‘great past’ in the US and in Europe provoked me. Brexit was the other trigger.
In a statement, Gospodinov said: “‘My urge to write this book came from the sense that something had gone awry in the clockworks of time. You could catch the scent of anxiety hanging in the air, you could touch it with your finger.
Georgi Gospodinov. Photo: Alamy
“After 2016 we seemed to be living in another world and another time. The world’s disintegration with the encroachment of populism and playing the card of the ‘great past’ in the US and in Europe provoked me.‘Brexit was the other trigger.
“I come from a system that sold a “bright future” under communism. Now the stakes have shifted, and populists are selling a “bright past”. I know via my own skin that both cheques bounce, they are backed by nothing. And that’s why I wanted to tell this story about the “referendums on the past”, undertaken by every European country. How does one live with a deficit of meaning and future? What do we do when the pandemic of the past engulfs us?
“The last chapter of the novel describes how the past comes to life: the troops and tanks amassed to reenact the beginning of World War II unexpectedly invade the neighbouring country’s territory.
“The idea of going from the clinics of the past, which deal with patients’/residents’ private pasts, to European referendums on the past was the basic framework for the plot from the outset. But I’m the kind of writer who likes to follow language and the stories themselves.
“I think language is smarter than we are. I come from poetry, so every word is precious to me. I write my novels sentence by sentence. And if I can get to the point where I’m following the narrator’s voice, with its language and rhythm, and even sometimes surprising myself with the way the story is unfolding, that’s good for the book.”
Angela Rodel is a literary translator, musician and actor, who works in Bulgaria. She is originally from Minnesota in the United States. This isn’t her first translation for Gospodinov – she translated his book, The Physics of Sorrow, which has won many awards.
Angela Rodel, translator. Photo: Alamy
In a statement on the International Booker Prize Website, Rodel said: “‘Georgi and I have been working together for quite a few years – I translated his previous novel as well as many short stories, essays, plays, even a space opera libretto.
“Our close collaboration has always been delightful and intellectually inspiring; despite his rather intimidating erudition, Georgi is also unusually empathetic and generous with his time and knowledge. Georgi cut his writerly teeth as a poet, so he is very interested in the craft of translation and loves to get into the weeds of rhythm and sound.
“I actually began translating the book before I had the chance to read it, for the simple reason that it hadn’t been finished yet!
“Given the success of Georgi’s previous novel, The Physics of Sorrow, numerous people, especially colleagues from his Cullman Center fellowship, but also his agent and others, were very eager to get a peek at his new work-in-progress – thus in the fall of 2019 I translated a 50-page excerpt of what would later become the opening of Time Shelter, which was finally published in Bulgarian in the infamous spring of 2020. Once the full Bulgarian final draft was ready, I dove in and translated the whole book in about six months.”
Leïla Slimani, Chair of Judges for the International Booker Prize 2023, added: “Our winner, Time Shelter, is a brilliant novel, full of irony and melancholy. It is a profound work that deals with a very contemporary question: What happens to us when our memories disappear?
“Georgi Gospodinov succeeds marvellously in dealing with both individual and collective destinies and it is this complex balance between the intimate and the universal that convinced and touched us.
“In scenes that are burlesque as well as heartbreaking, he questions the way in which our memory is the cement of our identity and our intimate narrative. But it is also a great novel about Europe, a continent in need of a future, where the past is reinvented, and nostalgia is a poison. It offers us a perspective on the destiny of countries like Bulgaria, which have found themselves at the heart of the ideological conflict between the West and the communist world.
‘The translator, Angela Rodel, has succeeded brilliantly in rendering this style and language, rich in references and deeply free.The past is only ever a story that is told. And not all storytellers have the talent of Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel.”
You can find out more about the International Booker Prize and Time Shelter, here.
If you liked this post then read The history of The International Booker Prize or Interview with Julia Sanches: Translator of Boulder next.
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Georgi Gospondiv
Georgi is a bulgarian poet, writer and playwright, who’s books have been published on over 23 languages. His latest book Time Shelter (2020) was published amidst the quarantine and the peak of the pandemic. It topped the bestselling-books charts in Bulgaria and won the 2023 International Booker Prize.
Angela Rodel
Angela is a literary translator, actor and musician who lives and works in Bulgaria She translated Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter from Bulgarian to English and won the 2023 International Booker Prize.
Maddy Burgess
maddy.blotmag@gmail.com
Maddy is a journalism student who enjoys writing about culture, entertainment and the arts. If she’s not reading a book, you’ll find her listening to Taylor Swift. She’s passionate about books that reflect what’s going on in society and lead us to ask important questions about the world around us.
Favourite genres: Contemporary Fiction and Romance.