Time Shelter
Winner of the International Booker Prize 2023
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- 45,00 kr
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
A GUARDIAN AND FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
'The most exquisite kind of literature' OLGA TOKARCZUK, author of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
'Genrebusting ... Gospodinov may just have created a classic' THE TIMES
'Could not be more timely... It's funny and absurd, but it's also frightening, because even as Gospodinov plays with the idea as fiction, the reader begins to recognise something rather closer to home' GUARDIAN
Gaustine, an enigmatic flâneur, opens a 'clinic for the past' that offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time.
But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a 'time shelter', hoping to escape from the horrors of our 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, a major voice in international literature.
'In equal measure playful and profound, Time Shelter renders the philosophical mesmerizing, and the everyday extraordinary. I loved it' CLAIRE MESSUD, author of The Woman Upstairs
'Gospodinov is one of Europe's most fascinating and irreplaceable novelists, and this his most expansive, soulful and mind-bending book' DAVE EGGERS, author of The Circle
Readers are raving:
'The minute I finished it, I wanted to start from the beginning and immediately reread' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'This is a story about each of us' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'A timely dystopian novel written in pristine, razor-sharp prose' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A radical new therapy tests the power of nostalgia in the electric and fantastical latest from Gospodinov (The Physics of Sorrow). In present-day Vienna, geriatric psychiatrist Gaustine redecorates his clinic in the style of the 1960s, replete with miniature pink Cadillacs and Beatles memorabilia. Patients with memory issues appear invigorated by the decor and share more during therapy. The narrator, an unnamed amateur novelist who had the same idea as Gaustine years earlier, comes across an article about the psychiatrist and seeks him out. They strike up an unusual collaboration: Gaustine establishes clinics that painstakingly recreate bygone eras with artifacts tracked down by the novelist. The clinics rapidly expand and start offering services to healthy people, and eventually entire countries opt to simulate returns to supposedly happier eras (France, Germany, and Spain all choose the 1980s). The clever prose sells the zany premise and imbues it with poignant longing: "Everything happens years after it has happened.... Most likely 1939 did not exist in 1939, there were just mornings when you woke up with a headache, uncertain and afraid." Thought-provoking and laced with potent satire, this deserves a spot next to Kafka.
