Time Shelter (2022) by Georgi Gospodinov

 Book Review

Time Shelter (2022)

by Georgi Gospodinov

   Time to take a break from the 1001 Novels: A Library of America project to take a look at the 2023 International Booker (books translated into English) winner, Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov and his novel Time Shelter.  The first thing I did was check my own posts for prior references to Bulgarian literature.  I came up with Elias Canetti, who lived in modern Bulgaria but spoke German (Auto-da-Fé, 1935, 1001 Books Project).  I've got A Ballad for Georg Henig by Victor Paskov (1987), which was included in the 2008 revised 1001 Books Project, replacing a Philip Roth novel (Operation Shylock)- I identify Ballad as the first Bulgarian novel in the 1001 Books project.  Finally there is On the Eve, by Russian author Ivan Turgenev- this book isn't written by a Bulgarian author but the protagonist is a Bulgarian patriot. 

   Time Shelter is mostly an example of the genre of European Philosophical Novel with an interesting science fiction-y twist, but it is most certainly not a work of genre science fiction no matter what marketing materials might claim.  Rather, Time Shelter is an extremely deep and nuanced reflection on the meaning of time and memory in the 21st century- you could also imagine this book being a four hundred page work of philosophy but then it probably would have been translated into English.

  I would not, however, recommend the Audiobook- which I managed to check out immediately without a wait-list AFTER the prize was announced- the Audiobook is not great.