Time Shelter

An unnamed narrator works with Gaustine, a psychiatrist who opens a clinic in Zürich for people with Alzheimer’s disease. Each floor recreates a past decade in intricate detail, so that patients can return to the time of their memories, and the narrator travels from country to country collecting objects for it. Before long, healthy people seek out the clinic as a refuge from their own lives, and more clinics open.

The idea spreads until referendums are held across Europe to decide which past decade each country should live in. First published in Bulgarian in 2020, the novel was translated into English by Angela Rodel.