“Time Shelter” invites us into a world desperately seeking to return to the past before it is finally forgotten. The story begins: “At one point they tried to calculate when time began, and when the planet Earth was created. The Irish bishop Usher, in the mid-17th century, calculated not only the exact year, but also the date: October 22, 4004 B.C. It was a Saturday (naturally). According to some, Usher also noted the exact time, around 6 p.m..”

However, time for the narrator, in his own perception, begins at the moment when he meets Gaustin, the “time wanderer.” Gaustin has moved away from modern reality: he reads old newspapers, wears old clothes, and wanders the forgotten avenues of the 20th century. Gaustin opens the first “Clinic of the Past” in Zurich. People with Alzheimer's are offered a unique treatment here: each floor of the building meticulously recreates one of the past decades.

Gaustin's assistant is the book's mysterious, anonymous narrator, whose job is to collect fragments of the past - from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to nostalgic scents and barely noticeable rays of afternoon light. The more convincing the reproduction of the era becomes, the more people come to the clinic. Even healthy people come to escape the chaos of everyday life. A sharp, moving and at the same time tragicomic story about the temporary refuge that we seek in the past when the present does not obey us.