Georgi Gospodinov won the International Booker Prize 2023, thus becoming the first-ever Bulgarian writer to win the prestigious award. He shared the prize with his translator Angela Rodel, who translated his book 'Time Shelter' into English for which they co-won the International Booker Prize 2023.
Gospodinov is considered one of the most important writers in contemporary European Literature, and many of his books have been translated into other languages.
In a recent interview with th Booker Prizes, Gospodinov had revealed his writing process. He shared when he first starts writing by jotting down his thoughts in a notebook, mostly in the afternoons. Later he uses these notes to start writing. "At the very beginning, when I’m writing in my notebook, I can be anywhere. It might seem strange to see someone using a notebook and surreptitiously jotting down thoughts in some random place, in the afternoon. I love afternoons. Then, when it comes to the real writing, I prefer to be in the same place, for it to be morning and to be alone. I never managed to get a ‘room of my own’, so I write in the living room when my family isn’t there. I used to smoke a lot, but I don’t anymore, I’ve found that if the story grabs hold of you, you don’t need anything else around you: coffee, cigarettes, nuts. Your only goal is to not lose the flow of the language," Gospodinov said.
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Talking about his award-winning book 'Time Shelter', he further said that it took him nearly three years to write his novels and he generally writes seven drafts of his novels. "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. I don’t like novels written like the Periodic Table, where the writer knows from the start what’s going to be in each box. I want the story to excite me, to be natural and human, not going from point A to point B, but instead getting lost and found," he shared.
Talking about the power of storytelling, Gospodinov said in the interview, "Storytelling generates empathy. It saves the world. Especially a world like the one we live in today. We write to postpone the end of the world."
He then spoke about the importance to celebrate translated fiction and said, "Translation gives us the sense that we are working towards this postponement together. It gives us the sense that in my Bulgarian story of sadness and anxiety, in someone else’s Peruvian story, for example, and in your English story, we are hurting in a very similar, human way. There is no other way to tame that pain and respond to it than to tell it. And the more languages we tell it in, the better."
