Time Shelter (Bulgarian: Времеубежище, romanized: Vremeubezhishte) is a 2020 novel by Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov. In 2021, the Italian version of the novel, titled Cronorifugio and translated by Giuseppe Dell'Agata was awarded the Strega European Prize.^[1] In 2023, the English version of the novel, translated by Angela Rodel, became the first Bulgarian-language novel to both be nominated for and win the International Booker Prize.^[2][3] The £50,000 prize was equally shared between Gospodinov and Rodel.^[4]

The novel follows an unnamed narrator and Gaustine, a psychiatrist who creates a clinic for people with Alzheimer's disease in Zürich.^[5] Each floor of the clinic recreates a decade in intricate detail, aiming to transport patients back in time to revisit their memories. Tasked with collecting past artifacts for the clinic, the narrator travels across countries.^[6][7] Soon, healthy people turn to the clinic to flee their monotonous lives and the idea becomes widespread when more clinics open. Referendums are held across Europe to decide which past decade each country should live in, in the future.^[8][9]

Time Shelter is Gospodinov's third novel to be published in English.^[10] In an interview with The Booker Prizes, Gospodinov revealed that his inspiration came from the rise of the populism movement in 2016, as well as Brexit, and that his writing was influenced by writers Thomas Mann and Jorge Luis Borges.^[11] Overall, the novel took nearly three years to write and around six months to be translated into English.^[11]