At Apollonia, Georgi Gospodinov Speaks about Personal Loss as He Presents New Book

Filip Pavlov, BTA special correspondent Vanya Suharova

Writer Georgi Gospodinov at the premiere of his book The Gardener and Death at the Apollonia Art Festival in Sozopol (BTA Photo/Hristo Stefanov)

Sozopol, on the Black Sea,

03.09.2024 13:17

(BTA)

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Preseting his latest book The Gardener and Death in Sozopol on Monday evening, world-renowned author Georgi Gospodinov spoke about sorrow, losing a parent and coping with it. The presentation took place during the 40th edition of the Apollonia Art Festival in the yard of the Art Gallery in Sozopol on Monday. The space was not enough for all people hoping to hear the International Booker Prize winning author.

"This book is, in a sense, about the end of summer. It is more special", noted Gospodinov, who told the audience that he had sent a manuscript of the book to actor Vladimir Penev and asked him to read it for an audio version but the actor called back saying he was unable to do that as he could not read this book without getting too emotional.

“This is a book one does not plan to write, it just hits you at some point," Gospodinov said. He shared that he wrote the novel very quickly, even writing by hand at first. "This book was written in the notebook and remains in the notebook. It took me about a month to upload what I wrote from the notebook to the computer. I admit that the writing helped me", he said.

He did the writing during the last days of his father.

He noted that when a person writes something, he experiences it for a second time, and that with this presentation of his book, he will experience the story for a third time. "I don't know if there will be another presentation, I have refused interviews. This book is about personal experience. This book is not about my father, but about fathers," Gospodinov pointed out and added that it turned out that his father was present in all of his books so far. The writer spent the last month of his father's life with him. "It's nice to hold our parents' hands while they're leaving, but it's nice to let them go afterwards to continue," he said.

According to the writer, this book is somewhat brutal in places, because "when you tell the ending, it is not only comforting or heroic, you have to tell about everything that happens to the person", he noted. "What I wanted to show in the book is the story of an ordinary person, not a heroic person. How one dies without burdening others, which is an important way of thinking for this [my father's] generation," Gospodinov said.

He kept asking his father about childhood, trying to take him back to a place and time when the pain was not there yet, and started reading his favourite book to his father. "And you say to yourself: it's not scary and ugly when a loved one dies. Paradoxically, it's not. For me he remained the most beautiful dying person," the author told the audience. His father kept saying "it's okay" and these words gave him courage.

After the presentation of his book, Gospodinov spoke about a writing class he had with seven young Bulgarian writers. "I have chosen these seven boys and girls without knowing them, just by their texts, which this is the best way to meet them", he said, adding that he never refuses activities with young people. He noted that he was also helped by poets whose work he admired and liked. "The idea is not to produce poets and writers. No one can produce poets and writers. It's lonely work, it's accepting that maybe you'll lose friends, that you'll stay in the same room every day, that you will have a hard time getting into a book and out of a book. And this book may not even be understood in the end", Gospodinov said.

/NF/