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In the six years of its existence, the Manchester Neurology book club has evolved two rules:
1. If it is your first time at book club, you pick the next book.
2. You cannot pick a book you have read before, especially one you have read and liked (because someone may [or probably will] dislike it with an equal passion, which may turn book club into Fight Club).
So when we chose Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, (translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel), winner of the International Booker Prize for 2023, it seemed a safe choice: no one had read it before.
The story begins at some unspecified point in time in the 20th century when the narrator ‘calls forth’ an imaginary friend/alter ego Gaustine, a psychiatrist, retrophile and dementia expert. Together they open a clinic for sufferers of dementia, with whole floors dedicated to a faithfully preserved, if idealised version of past decades, which people with retained remote memories can inhabit untroubled. This was a learning point and a reminder …
Footnotes
X @convectuoso111, @neuro_manc
Contributors RM took notes and drafted this report with CH. It was finessed with input from other authors listed. Also present to contribute were Joseph Perumpillichira, Javier Vicini, Rachael Power, Hannah Glasse (picking the next book), Aidan Whitehead and Chaitram Singh.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.