‘Time Shelter’ by Georgi Gospodinov  (2022) – 302 pages                Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel

Are you nostalgic for typewriters? For record players? For rotary dial telephones?

Do you want to return to some Golden Era of your own? The 1960s? The 1970s? The 1980s? Or some later decade? Can our memories of the past, real or imagined, protect us from the chaos of today? Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov attempts to answer those questions for us in his wry philosophical historical novel ‘Time Shelter’.

“I imagined how one day whole cities would change their calendar and go back several decades. And what would happen if a whole country decided to do so? Or several countries?”

In the 2023 International Booker Prize winning novel ‘Time Shelter’, each country in Europe must vote to decide what years of their past they want to return to, which years from the past really glowed for the people in that country. No country, except perhaps Switzerland, wants to return to the World War II years. The eastern European former Communist bloc countries do not vote to return to those God-forsaken years.

“If Scandinavia couldn’t decide which of its happy periods to choose, Romania was also racked by doubt, but for opposite reasons.”

Each country chooses its happy decade.

“The time is coming when more and more people will want to hide in the cave of the past, to turn back. And not for happy reasons, by the way. We need to be ready with the bomb shelter of the past. Call it the time shelter if you will.”

‘Time Shelter’ is a thought provoking novel that is quite playful and humorous at the same time. Perhaps the impetus for this novel was England’s Brexit decision. Instead of moving forward with the rest of Europe, England decided to go back to some nostalgic past.

“Can the past be resurrected or re-member-ed again? Should it be? And how much past can a person bear?”

Throughout Europe there are historical reenactments until an unfortunate reenactment of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination almost starts “the second First World War”.

I’m pretty sure this is the first novel from Bulgaria which I’ve read. This is an excellent start.

Grade:    A