"Time Shelter" by Georgi Gospodinov

 This book won the International Booker Prize in 2023.

The author and narrator (GG) meets a mysterious man called Gaustine (G) at a conference. Gaustine tries to treat dementia patients by taking them to 'time shelters': rooms which are authentic replicas of some moment of their past, the time they 'want' to live in. Gaustine's clinic has a floor for the 1940s, another for the 1950s, and so on.

The idea catches on. Bulgaria holds a referendum to determine whether it, as a nation, shall turn the clock past to its glorious nationalistic past (pre World War II) or its post World War 2 socialist heyday. Soon, nations across Europe are choosing the decade in which they want to live (although each referendum is divisive and prompts some to secede from the national era and choose their own time zons). Europe becomes a chaos of different nations returning to different times. Of course, the spectre haunting Europe is the Second World War. 

As the narrator starts to lose his own memory, re-enactment groups set out not just to replicate but to recreate the trigger points of the first and second world wars with deadly consequences.

This is very much a novel of ideas. It is strong on ideas. However, I felt it sacrificed characters and narrative to the ideas. For example, section 4 is devoted to explaining which decade was chosen by which country; the narrative of the rest of the book (such as it is) being suspended for about twenty pages. The only character I could imagine as flesh and blood was Demby; even the narrator seemed an intellectual construct, despite the information that dribbled out about his previous life. I felt that this distanced me emotionally from the story; in the end I didn't really care what happened.

The translation had some quirks (eg the use of the words 'gotten' and 'ass') which made me suspect that it had been rendered into American English.

Selected quotes:

• "The times is coming when more and more people will want to hide in the cave of the past." (1.11)
• "For us the past is the past, and even when we step into it, we know that the exit to the present is open, we can come back with ease. For those who have lost their memories, the door has slammed shut once and for all." (1.11)
• "Isn't it truly astonishing that there is no recording device for scents? ... we don't even have names for smells ... Rather, it's always through comparison ... It smells like violets, like toast, like seaweed, like rain, like a dead cat ..." (1.14)
• "A forgetful God, a God with Alzheimer's, would free us from all obligations. No memory, no crime." (1.20)
• "The most terrible thing about hide-and-seek is realizing that no one is looking for you anymore." (1.21)
• "Time doesn't nest in the unusual, it seeks a quiet, peaceful place." (1.27)
• "We are factories for the past. Living past-making machines, what else? We eat time and produce the past." (1.37)
• "Does the past disintegrate, or does it remain practically unchanged like plastic bags, slowly and deeply poisoning everything around itself." (1.37)
• "If hate were the gross domestic product, then  the growth of prosperity in some countries would soon be sky-high." (2.2)
• "fellows of an undefined middle-age (but with well-defined potbellies)" (3.12)
• "In short, that's how the sixties ended, like a college party where you've gotten drunk, just gotten your buzz on, and suddenly the cops bust in." (4.5)
• "God is not dead. God has forgotten. God has dementia." (5.4)
• "When I write, I know who I am, but once I stop, I am no longer so sure." (5.5)

August 2023; 302 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God