Georgi Gospodinov

Georgi Gospodinov was born in 1968. He is one of the most widely translated Bulgarian authors since 1989 and is considered one of Europe’s most inventive and daring writers.

His first book, A Natural Novel (Ikaros, 2020), was published in 1999, became an international bestseller, was translated into 24 languages and was described by The New Yorker as an ‘anarchic-experimental debut’. His second novel, On the Physics of Melancholy (Ikaros, 2018), has won numerous literary awards, including the State Novel Prize in Bulgaria (2013), the Swiss Jan Michalski Prize (2016) and the Polish Angelus Award (2019). It has been translated into more than 15 languages. His third novel, Chrono-Refuge (Ikaros, 2021), was published in 2020. It was honoured with the State Novel Prize in Bulgaria (2021) as well as the Strega Europeo Prize (2021).

He has taught on the Creative Writing Programme at Humboldt University in Berlin and worked as a visiting writer at the DAAD’s Berliner Künstlerprogramm and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.