Death and the Gardener

A Novel

By: Georgi Gospodinov, Angela Rodel - translator

Narrated by: Matt Addis

From the International Booker Prize-winning author of Time Shelter comes a powerful novel about a father, a son, and the botany of grief.

“My father was a gardener. Now he is a garden.”

A man named Georgi sits patiently by his father’s bedside, until a final winter morning. Navigating a season of grief, Georgi parses through the endless stories his father used to tell, and the history of his whole generation—boys born in Bulgaria at the end of World War II, grown into men “often absent—clinging to the snorkel of a cigarette,” swimming in “other waters and clouds.” Out of a barren village yard, Georgi’s father created a special sanctuary: A lush garden where he would live on in the snowdrop sprouts and the first tulips of spring. But without him, Georgi’s past, with all its afternoons, begins to crack.

With striking acuity, Gospodinov explores the quiet rituals of mourning—how we tame sorrow through storytelling and guide a life through to its end. Spanning from ancient Ithaca to present-day Sofia, the novel draws connections between myth and memory, place and emotion. Full of light and unflinching humor, and masterfully translated by Angela Rodel, Death and the Gardener is a profoundly moving work.

©2025 Georgi Gospodinov (P)2025 The Orion Publishing Group, Limited

Memories

The smallest of memories can trigger the many facets of a parent. Although our parents appear to be one-dimensional, we soon learn to appreciate and possibly understand the struggles and accomplishments that shaped their lives and ultimately our lens of our lives and relationships. We learn to create a "silutude" with their absent presence - a warm comforting blanket with no regrets. Having lost my mom, I have many moments to see the garden she nurtured that always seems to re-seed in other areas. I thank the author for assisting my memories of my mother's garden.