Space Opera

by Georgi Gospodinov, Angela Rodel (Translator)

The frontiers of the sublime extend into the far reaches of space in Georgi Gospodinov’s cosmic adventure starring archetypal astronauts Adam and Eve, Laika the dog and naturally, a Musca domestica or fruit fly. The Bulgarian author’s exercise in libretto writing takes the shape of a “giant poem” patterned after a hyper-saturated present where “information is everything/And everything is information…isn’t it?”. In answer, Gospodinov heads out of bounds, roving between Mars and Earth; voices, scales, valences of emotion. Mediated by camera cues and an insectoid chorus, Space Opera is a genre-collapsing work engaging an irreducible expanse of human and more-than-human experience on the cusp of seismic evolution.

Georgi Gospodinov transduces the psychic landscape of central and Eastern Europe through a literature of temporal diffusion and mythic sojourn. Gospodinov’s work encompasses poetry, installations and novels addressing modern philosophical tensions, such as Time Shelter, which received the 2023 International Booker Prize. He is an associate professor at the Institute of Literature in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Co-winner of the 2023 International Booker Prize for her translation of Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter, Angela Rodel is a literary translator, actor, and musician who lives and works in Bulgaria. Originally from Minnesota, Rodel holds degrees from Yale and UCLA, and has received NEA and PEN translation grants.

176 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2025

About the author

Georgi Gospodinov is a writer, poet and playwright based in Sofia, Bulgaria. He studied Bulgarian Philology at Sofia University. Later he defended a PhD on New Bulgarian literature with the Bulgaria Academy of Science's Institute for Literature. He is one of the most translated Bulgarian authors after 1989. He published the first Bulgarian graphic novel The Eternal Fly (Вечната муха).

Profile in Bulgarian: Георги Господинов.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Space Opera is Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov’s libretto about Adam and Even on a trip to Mars. Selected as the winners of a competition to find a couple that could stand being together the longest, the opera places Adam and Even in the tight confines of a small space capsule, where they will spend every moment of the next 500 days together, alone. Or so they think. Accompanying them are hidden cameras beaming images of the couple back home for a paying audience privy to their spats and sex. Also with them is a fruit fly, substituting for Eden’s snake. With echoes of the COVID pandemic and corporate dystopia.