A writer has barricaded himself in a library in New York. The library is in itself a place of refuge, a time capsule. The walls are covered with leather-bound books from bygone times – including an encyclopedia from the Cold War. Gospodinov writes: The narrator, like Gospodinov, is a writer and grew up in communist Bulgaria, in a system that daily told the population that it was only a matter of time before they would arrive in the classless ideal society. In “A Refuge in Time” he takes us in the opposite direction. People without faith in the future flee into the past. Georgi Gospodinov Photo: AP Georgi Gospodinov is a Bulgarian writer, poet and playwright. He was born in 1968 in Yambol, Bulgaria. Today he lives in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. He studied philosophy and holds a doctorate in Bulgarian literature at the Bulgaria Academy of Science’s Institute for Literature. In 2023, “A Refuge in Time” won the prestigious Booker Prize. Gospodinov is the first Bulgarian writer ever to receive this award. In 2022, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is the most translated author from Bulgaria after 1989. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages. “A refuge in time” is the second of his novels that has been translated into Norwegian. The first is “Natural novel” (2011). The post-war period in a building The novel opens with the author meeting a fellow student, who has always tended to live in yesterday’s world. He wants to start a clinic for people who have forgotten most things. Each floor is decorated as one of the decades from the last half of the twentieth century. The forties on the ground floor, the eighties and nineties at the very top with the associated interior, music and wallpaper. In these surroundings from childhood and youth, Alzheimer’s patients and dementia sufferers experience a return of their memories. The concept completely takes off. People who simply want to escape the present, and who have lost faith in the future, begin to appear at the clinic. The politicians in Europe decide to hold referendums, where the people get to decide which decade they want to live in. The Spanish choose the loose eighties, when the country had freed itself from the Franco dictatorship. The Bulgarians are arguing about whether they should re-introduce socialism, or rather return to a never fully realized glory days. NOSTALGIC MAP OF EUROPE: The Nordic countries (Norway is not included) choose the 70s, while the 80s dominate the continent when the people get to choose which decade they will live in in the future. The drawing is taken from “A refuge in time” by Georgi Gospodinov, p. 252. Photo: Solum Bokvennen / Facsimile Soviet cosmonauts To what extent this part of the novel should be read as a kind of reversed utopia or dystopia is up to each individual reader to decide on. The author of the book chooses to take all the precautions when he returns home to Bulgaria. He acquires both a sun hat à la Lenin and a nationalistic national costume so that he can blend in with the crowd, regardless of which past his countrymen choose. This playful framework narrative is, considered as a literary thought experiment, impressive. But I am most struck when Gospodinov moves into the individual and personal. As he approaches his own youth in the Bulgarian capital. Then everything is almost shrouded in a veil of smoke from strong, unfiltered Eastern European cigarettes, Bulgarian dishes, and the names of Soviet cosmonauts. For those of us not familiar with snezjanka (Bulgarian tzatziki), Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman in space) and Slava Kaltcheva (Bulgarian pop star), translator Morten Abildsnes has created a handy glossary at the back of the book. HAPPY PRIZE WINNER: Georgi Gospodinov won the coveted Booker Prize in 2023 for the book, which in English has been given the title “Time Shelter”. Here is the author together with English translator Angela Rodel. Photo: Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP Photo A good retreat Georgi Gospodinov is concerned with how individual and collective memory shapes our lives. He is interested in when our human urge to look back slips into toxic nostalgia. Sometimes there are sentences that are truly illuminating, that have a philosophical edge, and that Morten Abildsnes has certainly had his fill in translating: That is the question. Perhaps it is urgent to make contact with someone who remembers who you once were? Returning to areas where you once lived? Thoughts of that kind swirl “A refuge in time” in buckets and pails. After all, perhaps the novel as a genre is the ultimate refuge for those who want to escape the contemporary world. But this nostalgia trip comes with a caveat. Anyone who wants to change the world for the better should not choose the past as their permanent residence. news reviewer Photo: Solum Bokvennen Title: “A refuge in time” Original title in Bulgarian: “Времеубежище” Author: Georgi Gospodinov Translated from Bulgarian by: Morten Abildsnes Genre: Novel Publisher: Solum Bokvennen ISBN: 978-82-560-2742-2 Hello! I read and review literature in news. Please also read my review of “Kairos” by Jenny Erpenbeck, “Details” by Ia Genberg, or Franz Kafka’s “The Process” translated by Jon Fosse.
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“A refuge in time” by Georgi Gospodinov – Reviews and recommendations
