Death and the Gardner

Georgi Gospodinov

Through long winter mornings in Bulgaria, a man sits by the bedside of his elderly father. His father, who created and left­ behind a garden, blooming from a barren village yard: peonies and potatoes, roses and cherry trees. His father, without whom the man begins to quietly crack.

Because the end of our fathers is the end of a world. From the winner of the International Booker Prize comes a novel about a father, a son and an orphaned garden, interweaving the botany of sorrow, the consolations of storytelling and the arrival of the first tulips of spring. Translated by Angela Rodel