Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov
This 2023 winner of the International Book Prize is a Hungarian novel that is part satire, part reflection on the nature of memory and nostalgia, with a tricksy, experimental structure and some tropes of magical realism. In other words, it is just the sort of pretentious novel I read and then lambast for its pretention. Well, surprise, surprise, that’s not the case on this occasion… mostly. I really enjoyed this book, most of the time, although for large chunks of that time I was a little disorientated. That may have been Gospodinov’s purpose as the focus is very much on the pleasure and comfort of nostalgia but also the dangers. That’s where the satire comes in as nostalgia, which some 19th century physicians saw as a form of illness, is linked in this book with the emergence of populist leaders in Europe who hearken back to a golden age of national contentment.
For such a novel, it is easy to give a broad outline of the plot whilst struggling to provide the details that usually add a dash of colour to a review. An unnamed narrator, who is a Hungarian writer, tells us about his mysterious friend, Gaustine, a therapist who is involved in the treatment of people with Alzheimer’s and dementia. At the start of the novel, Gaustine is pioneering a new treatment for his patients which involves setting up a clinic with different rooms that reproduce the sights, sounds and smells from different decades. These are the decades from his patients’ past when they were younger, happier and which offer a deep-rooted familiarity. The narrator is fascinated by his enigmatic friend and the radical treatment that appears to offer a form of nostalgic comfort to the disordered minds of the patients. He begins to work alongside Gaustine as he expands his clinics and the different periods of the 20th century for which they cater. The narrator’s role is to travel across Europe seeking out objects from the past that will help create the illusion that a particular version of the past has returned.
The story then broadens out as healthy people begin to seek out the consolations of a past that seems so much more appealing than the harsh reality of now, with its uncertainties and potential threats. This yearning turns into a mass movement and soon entire countries spawn political movements seeking a mandate for a return to the past. Across Europe, referendums are called with different parties campaigning for a particular decade to be chosen that best represents a time of security, hope and happiness. Gospodinov has great fun describing the arguments deployed, the intensity of the campaigns and the clear parallels with the emergence of strong man leaders and nationalism in the world now. As someone who came of age just as the Soviet block was crumbling, he touches on all the resentments of countries such as East Germany where its citizens were disillusioned by the promised future post 1989. Lingering over all these amusing debates on the century’s best decade, though, is the warning that nostalgia has a tendency to forget the bad bits.
The main idea for this book, the MacGuffin, is an intriguing idea that is handled with skill by Gospodinov. That is until the final quarter of the book, following the referendum, when the focus is on the narrator. This is where the tricksiness, which I mentioned earlier, comes to the fore. The novel is a meta fiction that reflects on the nature of writing, memory and creativity and this moves away from political satire to an almost stream of consciousness exploration of the creative process. In this final section, the narrator and Gospodinov are most closely aligned and we see him seeking refuge in his writing while, at the same time, the reality around him is eroded by a created, nostalgic set of memories. All very clever but, in my opinion, the book loses its urgency at this point.
Nevertheless, I would urge you to read this book despite this caveat as it packs in more ideas than most of the contemporary British novels that I read which still, depressingly, have a narrow focus on certain types of dysfunctional middle class families.