English language
Published March 15, 2022 by Liveright Publishing Corporation.
A 'clinic for the past' offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time.
An unnamed narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to scents, and even afternoon light. But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a ‘time shelter’, hoping to escape the horrors of modern life - a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present.
Intricately crafted, and eloquently translated by Angela Rodel, Time Shelter cements Georgi Gospodinov’s reputation as one of the indispensable writers of our times, and a major voice in international literature.
An unraveling of memory and retreat into the past on a personal and national scale, somewhat disjointed and the author's fragmented voice comes through more irritatingly as we progress into an uncertain lack of future, but there's a lot to savor in a sarcastic sun-faded-sepia way.
