W&N snaps up three more from International Booker winner Gospodinov

W&N has snapped up three more titles from Georgi Gospodinov, author of Time Shelter, which won this year’s International Booker Prize.

Since its publication in March 2023, W&N have reprinted the paperback of Time Shelter 22 times.

Lettice Franklin, publishing director, has now acquired UK and Commonwealth rights in The Story Smuggler, The Physics of Sorrow and an as yet untitled story collection from Luke Ingram at The Wylie Agency.

In advance of the publication of these new titles from Gospodinov, W&N has also overseen a new unabridged audio production of Time Shelter, narrated by award-winning film, television and theatre star Toby Stephens. Stephens previously read an extract of Time Shelter as part of the book’s nomination for the International Booker Prize.

Jake Alderson, audio executive, said: “It has been a privilege to work on the audio edition of Georgi’s exquisite and groundbreaking novel, Time Shelter. We are delighted to be able to bring a new recording of Gaustine’s story to audiobook listeners and are proud to have it narrated by a voice as unique and as talented as Toby Stephens. This is a truly special audiobook and we look forward to bringing many more of Georgi’s books to audio listeners in the coming years.”

The Story Smuggler, the first book in the new deal, is translated from the Bulgarian by Kristina Kovacheva and Dan Gunn. It was first published by Sylph Editions in the Cahier Series in 2016, and W&N will publish in a hardback gift edition and e-book in February 2024. The book is described as “a winding journey through [Gospodinov’s] own memories and meditations” in which “he shows us a childhood under Communism, a particularly Bulgarian variety of melancholy, the freedom and thrills found in reading and writing, and the coming of age of one extraordinary writer”.

The Physics of Sorrow is translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel. It was first published by Open Letter in 2015, and W&N will publish in a paperback edition, e-book and audio in February 2024. It is described as a “dazzlingly inventive, sharply funny, mind-expanding novel”. It is “a radical reimagining of the Minotaur myth” in which “a narrator named Georgi constructs the story of his life like a labyrinth, meandering through the past to find the melancholy child at the centre of it all".

These two publications will be followed by a collection of Gospodinov’s short stories, translated by Rodel, in 2025, to be published in hardback, trade paperback, e-book and audiobook.

Franklin said: “2023 has been an extraordinary year for Georgi Gospodinov, with Time Shelter’s richly deserved win of the International Booker Prize. It has been a great pleasure watching readers fall for that novel, for its boldness, its humour, its prescience and its sheer brilliance. Now, all of us at W&N are so looking forward to publishing three more books by Georgi, starting with The Story Smuggler, a beautiful piece of autobiographical writing that I read in one sitting and have thought about ever since, and The Physics of Sorrow, a novel that expanded my mind and left me reeling.”