Hello Gentle Reader,
Georgi Gospodinov has won this years International Booker Prize for his novel "Time Shelter," a time traveling parable full of irony and melancholy. Georgi Gospodinov is first Bulgarian writer to win the International Booker Prize, and "Time Shelter," (obliviously) is the first novel written in Bulgarian to receive the prize.
The current Russo-Ukraine War has been fueled by an intense diet of propaganda. Vladmir Putin is known to have capitalized, rewritten, and glorified the former Soviet Union, acknowledging on a high level the former authoritarian regimes failures and imperfections, but hammers and pushes forward crucial realities about how the state was perceived by the world: they were respected, and if they were not respected, they were feared. To quote Svetlana Alexievich from her Nobel Lecture "On the Battle Lost,": "Russia chose to be strong over worthy." The continued force feeding of prior glory, previous greatness, the good ol' days, has created a society disinterested in creating a better future, but instead lost within the lapping comforts of the past on nostalgia's river bank. The current conflict has pitted two forces against each other, one refusing to go back to the mill to be grounded into submission again; while the other aggressive in scope and perspective, attempting to regain, relive, and reobtain that sense of glory of its past. A glory built on abject suffering and domination of any opposition.
"Time Shelter," is a novel that discusses these critical contemporary issues of the need for memory, both to shape and steer the direction of a social future; their comfort in which to retreat into; but also, the entrapment they pose in turn, suffocating those too far and lost within. Georgi Gospodinov has written a marvelous novel about memory, but also provided a necessary tonic to the current and renewed ideological divisions continue to split nations apart. Bulgaria as a former Soviet Satellite state, is all to aware of the difficulty it is to march towards the future, or stay miserable in a broken system. This continued polarization and confrontation between democratic steps and the former communists anchor around the neck, have often stalled the nation. "Time Shelter," is a welcomed winner of the International Booker Prize, and is more then an intriguing read.
Congratulations to both Georgi Gospodinov and his translator Angela Rodel.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
M. Mary
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