Time Shelter

 
 　　2023年布克國際獎得獎小說《時光庇護所》（Time Shelter），描述一位專門治療阿茲海默症患者的精神科醫師高斯汀，在蘇黎士所開設的第一間「過去診所」。
 
　　這棟神秘的杏色建築物被「勿忘我」的花草所環繞，高斯汀醫師採用一種獨特的方式為患者進行治療——「過去診所」的每一層樓，都以極為細緻考究的手法，複製過去歷史上每個十年特有的場景與氛圍，讓阿茲海默症患者走入時光隧道，解鎖塵封已久、逐漸消逝的記憶。
 
　　小說敘述者是高斯汀的助手，助手日常的任務是協助拼湊每個年代懷舊的碎片，比如1960年代的家具、1940年代的襯衫釦子，或是各個年代的氣味或光線之類……這些無法言喻的細節，巧妙呈現每一層樓、每個房間、每個年代獨特的氛圍，以協助阿茲海默症患者重拾記憶。
 
　　「過去診所」經營得相當成功，只是當《時光庇護所》的一切變得太過真實，這間專門治療阿茲海默症患者的診所，卻吸引了越來越多沒有記憶困擾的一般民眾，主動走入這棟建築。他們也企盼能走入不同的時空，逃離令人窒息的日常，尋求喘息與庇護。
 
　　原本美好的烏托邦，任由過去逐漸侵蝕了現在，製造出意料之外的另一種難題……
 
　　《時光庇護所》（Time Shelter）是保加利亞籍作家格奧爾基．戈斯波迪諾夫（Georgi Gospodinov）的第三本小說。故事行進中，處處可見作者敏捷的心思和不落俗套的幽默，令人屏息的筆法，使人聯想到卡爾維諾與卡夫卡等大師之作。英、美文壇齊聲讚揚，這是一部令人難以忘懷的經典作。(文／博客來外文館)

　　WINNER OF THE 2023 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
 
　　New Yorker • Best Books of 2022
 
　　An award-winning international sensation—with a second-act dystopian twist—Time Shelter is a tour de force set in a world clamoring for the past before it forgets.
 
　　“At one point they tried to calculate when time began, when exactly the earth had been created,” begins Time Shelter’s enigmatic narrator, who will go unnamed. “In the mid–seventeenth century, the Irish bishop Ussher calculated not only the exact year, but also a starting date: October 22, 4,004 years before Christ.” But for our narrator, time as he knows it begins when he meets Gaustine, a “vagrant in time” who has distanced his life from contemporary reality by reading old news, wearing tattered old clothes, and haunting the lost avenues of the twentieth century.
 
　　In an apricot-colored building in Zurich, surrounded by curiously planted forget-me-nots, Gaustine has opened the first “clinic for the past,” an institution that offers an inspired treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a past decade in minute detail, allowing patients to transport themselves back in time to unlock what is left of their fading memories. Serving as Gaustine’s assistant, the narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to nostalgic scents and even wisps of afternoon light. But as the charade becomes more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic to escape from the dead-end of their daily lives—a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present. Through sharply satirical, labyrinth-like vignettes reminiscent of Italo Calvino and Franz Kafka, the narrator recounts in breathtaking prose just how he became entrenched in a plot to stop time itself.
 
　　“A trickster at heart, and often very funny” (Garth Greenwell, The New Yorker), prolific Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov masterfully stalks the tragedies of the last century, including our own, in what becomes a haunting and eerily prescient novel teeming with ideas. Exquisitely translated by Angela Rodel, Time Shelter is a truly unforgettable classic from “one of Europe’s most fascinating and irreplaceable novelists” (Dave Eggers).