On May 23, local time, according to the Booker Punishment party news, the Bulgarian author Georgi Gopodinov won the 2023 Booker domestic literary punishment with his “Time Shelter”. It was also the first work to be penalized for its translation from the Bulgarian language.
“Time Shelter” opens in an autobiographical manner, and the supporting character “I” opens a time shelter. It is a clinic that cures diseases from the past, treating patients with Alzheimer’s disease, amnesia and amnesia, placing them in the years that they still remember or feel most comfortable, or providing services for dying elderly people to die in the best images. In the building, each floor of the room is created for a different year, decorated with details and objects from the past: the third floor belongs to the year 60, when the two supporting characters spent their childhood; The second floor belongs to the 50 years, the post-war re-mature period, belongs to jazz and rock; The basement belongs to 40 years, which can create the atmosphere of bomb shelters in peacetime. As the room becomes more realistic, more healthy people flock to the clinic, seeking a shelter from the past to escape the familiar life of modern terror.
Georgi Gopodinov and his translator (left) David Parry photograph source: Booker
In writing this volume, Gospodinov not only read about the same time and image, such as Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain” and Marcel Proust’s “To Remember like a Fire,” but also mined some relevant important poems and songs, such as W.H. Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939,” The Eagles’ “Tim’s Inn,” and many Beatles songs. “Because it’s a story about images, there are important songs.” Gospodinov spoke in an interview about the importance of the image in concealing the individual, or as he put it in the introduction to the story, “The brick of time’s concealment comes from those moments when we think we are not where we stand.”
Why does this book deserve the Booker National Literary sanction? The president of the 2023 Booker Punishment jury said that the story is rich in satire and melancholy colors, and the treatment of punishment is very contemporary achievements, such as what will happen when our images disappear? Gobodinov succeeded in striking a balance between the private and the universal, between the personal and the individual. In situations that are both hilarious and heartbreaking, Gospodinov also fails to mention how images can reinforce our identities and private images. In addition, the jury felt that “The Shelter of Time” is also a great story about Europe, showing us the luck of countries like Bulgaria, which are in the midst of fierce political and ideological conflicts. As well as touching the reader, the story provokes reflection and alarm, capturing the fragility of the past in a sensitive and precisely spoken, Proust form, and in a literary situation that blends modern writing with the exemplary texts of European literature, with the figurative supporting characters as products of the old world that are close to extinction.
Georgi Gobodinov, born in 1968, is one of the most respected contemporary authors in the Western literary circle. So far, Gobodinov has only not published three stories, and his first novel “Nature Story” has been translated into 21 languages, which is the most widely translated book of Bobodinov after 1989. His second book, “The Physics of Grief,” was one of the most sold stories in the country when it went out of print. The punishment of the work “Time Shelter”, by June 2022 has been translated into more than 20 kinds of speech.
In 2021, the Italian edition of The Shelter of Time received the famous Strytian punishment, making Gospodinov the first Eastern European author to receive it. Oltian Tokarchuk, the 2018 Nobel laureate for literature, derided Gobodinov’s ability to combine novel ideas, brilliant imagery and perfect writing techniques.
It is reported that Gobodinov’s “Time Sanctuary” and “Sad Physics Class” have been acquired by Century Literature, “Sad Physics Class” Chinese version will be released in the second half of this year, and “Time Sanctuary” is currently being translated.
The 2023 Booker Domestic Literary Penalty Jury includes works not published in the UK or Ireland between 1 May 2022 and 30 April 2023, with the penalty split equally between author and translator.