Time Shelter

Gospodinov's Sofia is the Bulgarian heart of a novel about a Europe seduced by its own past. A clinic that rebuilds vanished decades room by room spreads from Switzerland until whole countries vote on which era to move back into. The map holds to the mausoleum-haunted centre of the capital, from the yellow-paved political square out along Vitosha Boulevard.

The narrator

The first clinic for the past, Zurich

Part One

The story begins with a clinic that rebuilds the past in exact detail, decade by decade, so that patients losing their memory can live inside a time they still recognise. The first such refuge opens in Zurich before the idea travels across the continent.

Part One

inferred The novel places the founding clinic in Switzerland, in Zurich, but names no exact address; this marks the city centre as a representative point. It sits outside the book's Sofia setting.

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