The Time Lodge

Georgi Gospodinov

The narrator meets Gaustin, a time traveler, who has disconnected his life from modern reality and created the "clinic for the past". It is an institution that offers an original treatment for Alzheimer's patients: each floor reproduces in detail a decade of the last century. Patients lose their sense of the present and the future and are transported back in time, unlocking and reliving their memories.

Gospodinov with his wonderfully fragmentary writing proves, again, that it can surprise us and keep us awake. What does dementia mean, what is old age, how does one choose the world to live in but also what will one keep from oneself before one dies, what does the West and what does the East mean, how far is the nation from the fly? What is death? Combining irony and nostalgia, and alternating different types of writing, the author explores the monster of the past and how it affects a life with an uncertain future.

"It's not strange, Gaustin once told me, 'others always die, but we never do.'