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Now Winner of International Booker Prize 2023 - Congratulations.

Shortlisted for International Booker Prize 2023

Even though it's not a 100% original idea (Goodbye Lenin, Midnight in Paris), Time Shelter squeezes every philosophical aspect of time travel. That's both good and bad.

It starts with a genuine time travel concept that turns into a clinic of the past, created to help Alzheimer's patients live in the "remembered" time, an idea so appealing that ordinary people also want to live in the ideal "time."

Gospodinov always has something "spiritual" to say, but there is no action. You feel trapped in a loop of stories, philosophical reflections on time or national histories. The ending hardly matters. The journey is what's important.

For me, it was an interesting journey. It's hard not to see the merits when almost every page is written like this:

"In all ancient epics, there is one strong enemy you battle ... in modern-day novels these monsters have disappeared, the heroes are gone, too. Where there are no monsters, there are no heroes, either. Monsters still do exist, however. There is one monster that stalks every one of us. Death, you'll say, yes, of course, death is his brother, but old age is the monster."

But I believe that beyond its merits in discussing in a new way Alzheimer's disease and showing the traps of nostalgia, the message would have been more powerful if it wasn't told to you, but discovered by the reader in a more conventional story.