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Yes, another novel amidst of my historical non-fiction. Because the Bulgarian novellist Georgi Gospodinov cleverly illustrates a number of aspects of our relationship with the past, especially in these uncertain times. His novel is a sample of how the past is used/abused by individuals, ideologies, movements, collectivities, nations... to provide a foothold for the threatening present.
The author shows himself to be a student of postmodernism: he adheres to the conviction that the past is a construction. Just look at the myth of the year 1968, he writes: “I assume that there was no 1968 yet in the year 1968. No one shouted at the time: Man, the year we are living in now is the famous year 1968. In fact, everything only happens years after it happened... You need time and a story to make what has already happened, so to speak, happen... with delay, just as photographs were developed back then and images slowly emerged from the darkness.� At first sight, the statement that the past only takes shape in the future, might been seen as counter-intuitive. But it is a good sample of what has been known among theorists of history for some time. But then, of course, this is not the whole story: sure, history is made in reversal, but it is done with the stuff that comes from the past, and you cannot do just anything with that, contrary to what radical postmodernism claims.
Anyway, Gospodinov offers a lot of food for thought in this sometimes hilarious novel. His conclusion, “We are the food of time� certainly is a justified statement.