Being Home in the Shelter of Time: Gospodinov’s Time Shelter

Abstract

In the context of contemporary culture, nostalgia is often linked to feelings of deep yearning for home. Human’s pathological home desire and traumatic state of most individuals due to modern life result in nostalgic feelings that are often associated with the safety and coziness of home. In order to maintain such state of protection, people not only yearn for the physical state of their home but also long for the time they spent in that protected world. Their memories of the past are anchored in such space and time where they can have self-continuity, increase attachment security and boost self-esteem. Such individual memories of the past function as a shield that neutralizes the threats of the unknown present and therefore, serves as “time shelter”. The same is also true for collective memory. People tend to prefer living in specific time periods in which they are secure and feel a sense of belonging. Though this kind of longing for a specific time period can be maintained via memories, Georgi Gospodinov, a Bulgarian writer, claims it can also be physically actualized through a strong, mainstream narrative. While focusing on both the biological and sociological reasons behind people’s need and motives to forget and live in nostalgia, Georgi Gospodinov, the winner of the International Booker Prize 2023, also sheds light on how socially constructed realities, particularly “time”, can become reality once accepted collectively in his novel, Time Shelter.