Time Shelter

In Time Shelter, an unnamed narrator meets Gaustine, a flâneur through time, who has uncoupled his life from his contemporary reality, reading old news, wearing old clothes, haunting the lost avenues of the twentieth century. Gaustine is the mind behind the first clinic for the past, an institution based in Zurich that offers an inspired treatment for Alzheimers sufferers: each floor reproduces a past decade in minute detail, allowing patients to transport themselves back in time and find comfort in their fading memories. Yet an increasing number of healthy people are interested in seeking out the clinic as a form of time shelter, hoping to escape from the horrors of our present, a development that results in an unexpected conundrum, when the past beings to invade the present. About the Author: Georgi Gospodinov was born in Yambol, Bulgaria, in 1968. His works have now been translated to acclaim in 25 languages, have been shortlisted for more than a dozen international prizes - including the PEN Literary Award for Translation, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori, the Bruecke Berlin Preis, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Literaturpreis - and have won the 2016 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, the 2019 Angelus Literature Central Europe Prize and the 2021 Premio Strega Europe, among others.