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the complete review - fiction

Death and the Gardener

by
Georgi Gospodinov

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B+ : effectively affecting

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "This is a difficult book to read at times, and in all likelihood most difficult for those to whom it speaks most directly, those who have experienced the same suffering. But they may also find a welcome recognition and empathy, and the beauty from truth that the best art delivers. And it is not all sombre. (...) (T)o the select canon of worthwhile books about fathers, Gospodinov has created a vital and valuable addition." - John Self, Financial Times
  
  
• "Ever playful, never linear, his new novel Death and the Gardener consists of vignettes of a beloved dying and dead father, told by a narrator who, like Gospodinov, is an author. Gospodinov has spoken publicly about losing his own father recently, and the novel feels autobiographical in tone. (...) As well as describing Bulgarian funerary traditions (eat boiled wheat by someone’s grave, and you will dream about them), the novel also captures how technology has changed our relationship to death. (...) As well as describing Bulgarian funerary traditions (eat boiled wheat by someone’s grave, and you will dream about them), the novel also captures how technology has changed our relationship to death." - Camilla Grudova, The Guardian
  
  
• "Georgi Gospodinov ringt in diesem stillen Buch mit dem Schmerz, mit der Sprache, mit der Ungeheuerlichkeit des Endes. In unprätentiösen Sätzen gelingt es ihm, leise das Unaussprechliche zu umkreisen -- und der Übersetzer Alexander Sitzmann gibt auf Zehenspitzen das Beste. Wie schon in den Romanen Physik der Schwermut oder Zeitzuflucht experimentiert der Autor auch hier mit der Zeit -- doch diesmal ist es keine metaphysische Zeitreise, sondern eine zutiefst persönliche und schmerzhafte Rückblende." - Franz Haas, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
  
  
• "Was er erzählt, bewegt uns zutiefst, und wie er es erzählt, erweckt Bewunderung. In seinem bisher persönlichsten Buch zeigt sich der Booker-Prize-Träger zwar nicht so experimentierfreudig wie etwa in seinem Roman Physik der Schwermut, der aus der Perspektive einer Nacktschnecke die Absurditäten des Kommunismus in Bulgarien freilegte, aber mit einem eindimensionalen Bericht begnügt er sich auch hier nicht. (...) Doch das Elend hat nicht das letzte Wort. Der Garten, den der Vater angelegt hat, wird zur Metapher fürs Leben schlechthin. In ihm gibt es so etwas wie Auferstehung, denn Mal um Mal ereignet sich hier das Wunder von Blüte und Frucht." - Manfred Papst, Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag
  
  
• "(A)n exquisitely tender novel about the last pain-ridden days of a proud, unworldly man and a middle-aged son’s grief: a meditation on the meaning of fatherhood, and how childhood only really ends with the deaths of one’s parents. (...) Death and the Gardener is pleasurably absurdist yet elegiac." - Catherine Taylor, The Observer
  
  
• "The narrator's recollection is a collage of details, and it is in these that a portrait takes shape. (...) No matter what its genre, this book suggests, our stories of grief should be stories about others, and all the myriad details in which they return to us" - Kevin Brazil, Times Literary Supplement
  
  
• "So ist Gospodinovs Vaterbuch in Wahrheit auch ein Buch über die Anfänge seines eigenen Schreibens. Über das Erbe des Gärtners, das er angetreten hat. Als eine Art grüner Alchimist. Die Blumen des Vaters hat er in Romane verwandelt, die in der ganzen Welt gelesen werden." - Volker Weidermann, Die Zeit

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Near the conclusion of Death and the Gardener the narrator writes:

     This book has no obvious genre; it needs to create one for itself. Just as death has no genre. Nor does life. And the garden ? Perhaps it's a genre unto itself, or it gather all others into itself. An elegiac novel, a novel/memoir, or a novel/garden. It makes no difference to the botany of sorrow.

     The notebook I'm writing in was started in October. This means that when it began, my father was still alive. Only thirty pages ago, he was still alive. And no one had any idea what would follow.

     I'll continue on later. Right now I need a first-rate, first-aid story from my father's stockpile.

- M.A.Orthofer, 2 August 2025

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Links:

• Liveright publicity page
• Weidenfeld & Nicolson publicity page
• Жанет 45 publicity page
• Gallimard publicity page
• Aufbau publicity page
• Voland publicity page
• Impedimenta publicity page

• buzz
• CriticaLetteraria (Italian)
• Gli Amanti dei Libri (Italian)
• The Guardian
• El Imparcial (Spanish)
• Leggere a lume di candela. (Italian)
• La lettrice controcorrente (Italian)
• Magma Magazine (Italian)
• Meridiano 13 (Italian)
• Il mestiere di leggere (Italian)
• The Observer
• Readings
• The Skinny
• SoloLibri.net (Italian)
• ThrillerNord (Italian)
• tuttatoscanalib (Italian)
• Universo letterario (Italian)
• Die Zeit (German)
• zenda (Spanish)

• Official site
• Georgi Gospodinov at Contemporary Bulgarian Writers

• And Other Stories
• Natural Novel
• The Physics of Sorrow
• The Story Smuggler
• Time Shelter

• Arno Geiger's The Old King in His Exile
• Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle: Book One (UK title: A Death in the Family)
• See Index of Eastern European literature

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About the Author:

       Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov (Георги Господинов) was born in 1968.

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© 2025 the complete review

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