Is memory the cement of your identity? Are we in danger of a new world order facilitated by nostalgia?

Georgi Gospodinov’s wholly remarkable and enjoyable novel TIME SHELTER (translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel) has just been awarded the 2023 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE.
In this compelling novel of ideas, large concepts and fierce insights are carried on a generous tide of humour and human warmth, resulting in a memorable and thought-provoking reading experience.

When Gaustine opens a ‘clinic for the past’ to treat dementia patients by recreating previous decades in minute detail, the simulacra become so convincing that more and more healthy people seek to use the clinic as a ‘time shelter’ to escape the horrors of our present, and memory itself becomes a threat to our future.

What the judges said: “Time Shelter is a brilliant novel, full of irony and melancholy. It is a profound work that deals with a very contemporary question: What happens to us when our memories disappear? Georgi Gospodinov succeeds marvellously in dealing with both individual and collective destinies and it is this complex balance between the intimate and the universal that convinced and touched us.
In scenes that are burlesque as well as heartbreaking, he questions the way in which our memory is the cement of our identity and our intimate narrative. But it is also a great novel about Europe, a continent in need of a future, where the past is reinvented, and nostalgia is a poison. It offers us a perspective on the destiny of countries like Bulgaria, which have found themselves at the heart of the ideological conflict between the West and the communist world. 
It is a novel that invites reflection and vigilance as much as it moves us, because the language – sensitive and precise – manages to capture, in a Proustian vein, the extreme fragility of the past. And it mixes, in its very form, a great modernity with references to the major texts of European literature, notably through the character of Gaustine, an emanation from a world on the verge of extinction. 
The translator, Angela Rodel, has succeeded brilliantly in rendering this style and language, rich in references and deeply free.
The past is only ever a story that is told. And not all storytellers have the talent of Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel.”

>>Your copy.

Find out more:

• Winning the International Booker Prize.

• The story is losing its memory.

• The story of the Other.

• A reading from the book.

• More like a duet.

• A guide to Time Shelter.

• Elementary particles.

• Gospodinov on Giacometti.

• The other books short-listed for the 2023 International Booker Prize.

• And the long list!

The short list for the 2023 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE contains some outstanding books. Read what the judges have to say, and then click through for your copies: 

Standing Heavy by GauZ' (translated from French by Frank Wynne): ”A sharp and satirical take on the legacies of French colonial history and life in Paris today. Told in a fast-paced, and fluently translated, style of shifting perspectives, Standing Heavy carries us through the decades.”

Time Shelter Georgi Gospodinov (translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel): "A wide-ranging, thought-provoking, macabre and humorous novel about nationality, identity and ageing, and about the healing and destructive power of memory."

Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel (translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey): “Two best friends share an aversion to ‘the human shackles’ of motherhood, only to discover that life has other plans. With a twisty, enveloping plot, the novel poses some of the knottiest questions about freedom, disability, and dependence – all in language so blunt it burns.”

Boulder by Eva Baltasar (translated from Catalan by Julia Sanches): “Boulder is a sensuous, sexy, intense book. Eva Baltasar condenses the sensations and experiences of a dozen more ordinary novels into just over 100 pages of exhilarating prose. An incisive story of queer love and motherhood that slices open the dilemmas of exchanging independence for intimacy.”

Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan (translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim): "A carnivalesque fairy tale that celebrates independence and enterprise, a picaresque quest through Korea’s landscapes and history, Whale is a riot of a book. Cheon Myeong-Kwan’s vivid characters are foolish but wise, awful but endearing, and always irrepressible. This is a hymn to restlessness and self-transformation."

The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé (translated from French by Richard Philcox): ”The book borrows from the tradition of magical realism and draws us into a world full of colour and life. This is a book that succeeds in mixing humour with poetry, and depth with lightness.”

>>Order your copies now.
>>The other long-listed books are also excellent. 
The winner will be announced on 23 May.