Time Shelter

By: Georgi Gospodinov, Angela Rodel - translator

Narrated by: Jeff Harding

“At one point they tried to calculate when time began, when exactly the earth had been created,” begins Time Shelter’s enigmatic narrator, who goes unnamed. “In the mid-seventeenth century, the Irish bishop Ussher calculated not only the exact year, but also a starting date: October 22, 4,004 years before Christ.” But for our narrator, time as he knows it begins when he meets Gaustine, a “vagrant in time” who has distanced his life from contemporary reality by reading old news, wearing tattered old clothes, and haunting the lost avenues of the twentieth century.

In an apricot-colored building in Zurich, surrounded by curiously planted forget-me-nots, Gaustine has opened the first “clinic for the past,” an institution that offers an inspired treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a past decade in minute detail, allowing patients to transport themselves back in time to unlock what is left of their fading memories. Serving as Gaustine’s assistant, the narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to nostalgic scents and even wisps of afternoon light. But as the charade becomes more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic to escape from the dead-end of their daily lives—a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present. Through sharply satirical, labyrinth-like vignettes reminiscent of Italo Calvino and Franz Kafka, the narrator recounts in breathtaking prose just how he became entrenched in a plot to stop time itself.

©2022 Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel (P)2022 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Clever but hard to follow.

The Bulgarian perspective was interesting but a little too disjointed. OK but not great. Would not recommend it.

Not finished yet, fascinating concept but oh! the reader

I’m really enjoying the book so far, so much of which is relevant (and familiar) to someone who grew up in another culture and now lives in the US, and who is only 18 months away from 80, BUT the reader drives me nuts! Every sentence follows the same modulation and tone; no variance; no drama; no subtlety. He may be good for something else but not this book. Gruesome.

Wonderful thoughts in the past, present and future

Not my favorite book. I missed haven’t a glowing point to the story, but I am glad I read it. It will give me things to think about for many days. I might even read it again, who knows their future?

Fantastic story

Poor choice of narrator. The narrator’s voice detracted from enjoying the book. Many authoritarian governments today are are trying to recreate the past: Putin, Hungary, Italy.. etc. Trump “make America great again”. Not sure which years he’s thinking of.

Time well spent

This is a thinking man’s book full of humor and pathos with a fresh look at time and the danger of depending upon memories in a world full of Alzheimer’s patients. Yearning for the past when the past can kill you. A marvel of translation, this book will amaze and delight you.

Challenging and insightful

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It provides a framework to explore memory, the relationship between time, experience and memory, and aging and loss of memory and recollection. Some very funny suggestions as well (what if God develops Alzheimers?). Along with exploration of loss and loneliness as those with whom we share a past pass away. The performance is more like a reporter reading the facts of a story, and some of the voicing isn’t great. The flat tone creates a feeling of objectivity in description of events, and I thought it suited the text.

Unique concept;reader was sardonic throughout

My book club of seniors will discuss it this week: curious and anticipating discussion.
Interesting concept.

Seems to be read by really bad AI

I’m fascinated by this book, but haven’t finished it yet, due in large part to an impossibly bad reading performance. My suspicion is that this was read not by a human being, but by some male Alexa or something. Do not recommend.

Great story about memory & forgetting

Brilliant story about time & history. Lovely references to Borges, the Odyssey, Thomas Mann, the Bible, etc woven into a philosophical meditation on war, memory & forgetting.
The narrator has an annoyingly repetitive style of reading and sometimes mispronounces words, but overall I loved this book.

Nostalgia, memories, dementia and nationalism blur.

Interesting concepts; frightening implications. What is lived experience; what is nationalistic nostalgia; what if past becomes future?