The Physics Of Sorrow : A Novel
A radical reimagining of the minotaur myth, from an essential voice in world literature.
Winner of the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature ā¢ Finalist for the PEN Literary Award for Translation and the Strega Europeo
Published a decade before his International Booker Prizeāwinning Time Shelter, Georgi Gospodinovās The Physics of Sorrow has become an underground cult classic. Finding strange solace in the myth of the Minotaur, a man named Georgi reconstructs the story of his life like a labyrinth, meandering through the past to find the melancholy child at the center of it all. With profound wit and empathy, he catalogues curious instances of abandonment, spanning from antiquity to the Anthropocene; recounts scenes of a turbulent boyhood in 1970s Bulgaria, spent mostly in a basement; and charts a bizarre run-in with an eccentric flaneur named Gaustine. Exquisitely translated by Angela Rodel, and exhibiting his signature audacious style, this expansive work affirms Gospodinov as āone of Europeās most fascinating and irreplaceable novelistsā (Dave Eggers).