Georgi Gospodinov: Времеубежище (Time Shelter)

The latest addition to my website is Georgi Gospodinov‘s Времеубежище (Time Shelter). Gaustine, who may or may not exist but whom we have met before in Физика на тъгата (The Physics of Sorrow), is a geriatric psychiatrist. Assisted by the narrator who calls himself Ishmael but may well be the author, he sets up a series of homes for the Alzheimer’s/dementia patients which are seemingly set in various decades in the past, with all the relevant trappings, thus making these patients feel more at home as they regress to the past. However, eventually, the EU decides to do the same for countries as a whole, with the favourite decade decided by popular vote. Some of the book is clearly Gospodinov ruminating on memory, the past, the future, death, forgetting and remembering, with a host of fascinating ideas about how we are regressing to the past while struggling with the future. As always with Gospodinov, a thoroughly original book.

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