Time Shelter

Time Shelter

THE NEW YORK TIMES: What if We Could Relive Our Golden Ages?

One of the more promising treatments for dementia has been "reminiscence therapy", which employs artifacts and photos to improve mood and awareness. Some have even built "dementia villages", which recreate settings from patients’ younger days: movie theaters, diners, bus stops. While proponents claim such environments bolster patients’ humanity, others have criticized them as "Truman Show" - style stagecraft.

Underlying these more immersive interventions, of course, is some degree of deception, and not all the memories wrested free are happy ones. 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, Time Shelter.

Here is the review

THE TIMES: Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov review - a warning to Europe and Putin

What if we could escape from our troubling times into a ‘clinic for the past’? Simon Ings finds out in this novel by Bulgaria’s Orwell

Here is the review

THE GUARDIAN: Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov review – the dangers of dwelling in the past

From communism to the Brexit referendum and conflict in Europe, this funny yet frightening Bulgarian novel explores the weaponisation of nostalgia

This novel could have been a clever, high-concept intellectual game with little by way of emotional investment, but Gospodinov is a writer of great warmth as well as skill.

Here is the review

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