Time Shelter: A Novel [Hardcover]

WINNER OF THE 2023 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE In this antic fantasy of European politics, narrated by a fictionalized version of the author, an enigmatic friend of his designs 'a clinic of the past,' which soothes Alzheimers patients with environments from a time they can still remember.... 'History is still news,' Gospodinov writes, cunningly drawing attention to the violence that the past wreaks on the present. The morality of artificially returning people to the past, and the broader question of whether this truly brings solace  whether indulgence in nostalgia is curative or pernicious  is the central question of Georgi Gospodinovs newly translated novel& Adroit execution of such wordplay is a testament to the talent of the novels translator, Angela Rodel. [Gospodinov] is sympathetic to the poignancy of things from before  obsolete objects, old brands of coffee, the skipping of antique records  but rebuffs the scapegoats of globalism, immigration and modernization that supposedly killed them off; we are all complicit in the destruction of history, and going backward can only mean intolerance and the exaltation of traditionalist kitsch. Its impossible, when reading all this, not to think of the reactionary sentiments behind Brexit and MAGA and even Putins Greater Russia irredentism, but Gospodinov is too delicate to resort to crude political satire.& Touching and intelligent. Mr. Gospodinov, one of Bulgarias most popular contemporary writers, is a nostalgia artist. In the manner of Orhan Pamuk and Andre? Makine, his books are preoccupied with memory, its ambiguous pleasures and its wistful, melancholy attraction....This difficult but rewarding novel concludes with an image of Europe brought to the brink of renewed conflictan abstraction that recent events have imbued with the terrible force of reality. A chronicle of time itself: this is the ambitious task undertaken by Georgi Gospodinov, Bulgarias greatest living writer and annalist of an entire nalƒ³