Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, Translated by Angela Rodel (2022) Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter, originally written in 2020 with the English translation arriving in 2022, captured the International Booker Award in 2023, the first win for a Bulgarian language book. In Gospodinov’s science fiction satire, an unnamed narrator and his mysterious physiatrist friend, Gaustein, open up a new kind of clinic in Switzerland attempting to sooth the distress and trauma of Alzheimer and dementia patients. Differing from most memory care facilities, their inventive treatment center seeks to carefully recreate the past for their patients. Meticulously crafted, each level of this center captures a past decade down to the placement of the sofas of the time, to the magazines on the coffee table, to the music and cigarettes being smoked. Built to ease the patients as their ailments worsen, the narrator and Gaustein hope to shield them from the present, and shelter them in their past. As the popularity of the clinic grows, healthy people also want the chance to perfectly relive the past, to exist inside their memories and return to times that seemed to be simpler, perceived to be happier, and certainly when they were more youthful. Not stopping there, soon full countries and governments want to take the leap into fully returning to past times, each European country voting on which decade to return to. Gospodinov’s inventive novel puts an absurd and science fiction twist on our current phenomenon of populism and reversion to the past. He carefully captures the discontent with the present day of technology and the way things are, taking the idea to the extreme end of entirely committing to returning our world to the past. Fantastically inventive, Time Shelter is a clever interpretation of current politics and cultural strife. The Ruins of Nostalgia by Donna Stonecipher (2023) In Donna Stonecipher’s sixth poetry collection, The Ruins of Nostalgia, she wanders through our longing for the past and the complexity of memory and history. Captured as 64 poems, Stonecipher contends with our embrace of technology while we wistfully look back to times of tape answering machines. The ever changing cities and buildings, as places that stir memories of youth, are bulldozed. Through the distorted lens of nostalgia she examines time. “When the present looks back at the prearranged past and adores it in a mise-en-abyme of feeling, the prearranged past can luxuriate into the post-arranged moment after the events have gone through their spellbinding mother-of-pearl handled sieved of happiness, littering time pieces along the cognitive shore.” Skillfully zooming in to minute details of nostalgia in our everyday lives, to the impact of looking back on nations and past inventions, Stonecipher interprets this complex and universal feeling through elegant prose. She brings the sensation of nostalgia to the forefront of our minds, highlighting its constant presence and one that seems to be more deeply haunting as we advance our ability to keep more thorough personal and historical records. The Ruins of Nostalgia is a beautiful collection examining our constant urge to look backwards as Stonecipher asks, “And when the present is perfect — will we no longer be so ravished to vanish into the ruins of nostalgia?” No. 135 By Hana Zittel
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