India, Jan. 2 -- 'My father was a gardener. Now he is a garden'; Georgi Gospodinov's latest novel is a poignant letter to the self about losing a loved one. Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel, the International Booker-Prize winning pair have returned with another novel that makes the reader think about the myriad intricacies of the heart.

A writer has set out to map his father's journey unto death. His father is dying of cancer and the 56-year-old son is unable to come to terms with this. The father's garden is left unattended; it blooms with produce and flowers that the father had planted months before his decline. Now the garden survives lonely without its gardener. Out of grief and an urgency to immortalise the man, the wri...