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Time ShelterStock informationGeneral Fields
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Local DescriptionReview: The most exquisite kind of literature, on our perception of time and its passing, written in a masterful and totally unpredictable style. Each page comes as a surprise, so that you never know where the author is going to take you next. I've put it on a special shelf in my library that I reserve for books that can never be fully exhausted-books that demand to be revisited every now and then. * Olga Tokarczuk, author of THE BOOKS OF JACOB and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature *
An extraordinary romp through time and memory, a beautifully written and wonderfully inventive meditation on what the past means to us, whether we can recapture it and how it defines our present. This is the perfect novel for these cloistered atemporal times. * Alberto Manguel, author of A HISTORY OF READING *
Memory and kitsch - and their painful congruence in post-Soviet Europe - will be familiar themes to readers of Gospodinov's last book, The Physics of Sorrow. The novels share allusive, discontinuous narratives, an appetite for switching genres, an alertness to the power and the fragility of authorship and a dark humour rimed with grief. But in Time Shelter, finished shortly before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Gospodinov's sights are higher and his scope - conceptually and geographically - far wider . . . And the paradoxes that hummed quietly in the background of previous books roar into apocalyptic high gear -- Madoc Cairns * LITERARY REVIEW * The morality of artificially returning people to the past, and the broader question of whether this truly brings solace - whether indulgence in nostalgia is curative or pernicious - is the central question of Georgi Gospodinov's newly translated novel... Touching and intelligent -- Adrian Nathan West, * NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (USA) *
Author Biography: 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.
DescriptionIn Time Shelter, an enigmatic flâneur named Gaustine 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. As Gaustine's assistant, the 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 from the horrors of our present - a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present. Reviews'The most exquisite kind of literature... I've put it on a special shelf in my library that I reserve for books that can never be fully exhausted - books that demand to be revisited every now and then.' Olga Tokarczuk, author of The Books of Jacob and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Author descriptionGeorgi Gospodinov is one of Europe's most acclaimed writers. Originally from Bulgaria, his novels have won his country's most prestigious literary prize twice and have been shortlisted for more than a dozen international prizes - including the 2015 PEN Literary Award for Translation, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori, the Premio Strega Europeo, the Bruecke Berlin Preis, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Literaturpreis. He has won the 2016 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, the 2019 Angelus Literature Central Europe Prize and the 2021 Premio Strega Europeo, among others. |