Bulgarian writer wins International Booker Prize for darkly comic memory novel

By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov and translator Angela Rodel have won the International Booker Prize for “Time Shelter,” a darkly comic novel about the dangerous appeal of nostalgia. The book beat five other finalists to the prize, which recognizes fiction from around the world that has been translated into English. The 50,000 pounds ($62,000) in prize money is divided between author and translator. “Time Shelter” imagines a clinic that recreates the past, with each floor reproducing a different decade, which becomes a magnet for people eager to escape the modern world. French novelist Leila Slimani, who chaired the judging panel, called it “a brilliant novel full of irony and melancholy.”