The physics of sorrow

Georgi Gospodinov

£9.99

Available on back-order

Using the myth of the Minotaur as its organising image, the narrator constructs a labyrinth of stories about his family, jumping from era to era and viewpoint to viewpoint, exploring the mindset and trappings of Eastern Europeans. Moving and funny, this is a book you can inhabit, tracing connections, getting pleasantly lost in the stories and empathising with the sorrowful, misunderstood Minotaur at the centre of it all.

ISBN: 9781399623131 Category:

Description

‘Compulsively readable’ New York Times
‘Utterly original’ Alberto Manguel

In the small and the insignificant – that’s where life hides, that’s where it builds its nest.

Our unnamed narrator is not well. He suffers from attacks of ‘pathological empathy’, which cause him to wander unbidden into other people’s memories. He moves from recollection to recollection – from a Bulgarian country fair in 1925, where he meets a Minotaur, to inside the mind of a slug, as it is swallowed by his own Grandfather.

Part family history, part coming-of-age story, part meditation on life in Communist Europe, The Physics of Sorrow is a dazzlingly inventive, mind-expanding novel from one of Europe’s most important writers.

TRANSLATED FROM THE BULGARIAN BY ANGELA RODEL

Additional information

Weight 0.262 kg
Dimensions 19.6 × 12.8 × 2.8 cm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

x, 277

Language

English

Edition

Reprint

Dewey

891.8134 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K

Join our Mailing List

Sign up to the Jaffé & Neale newsletters to receive updates on forthcoming titles we’re excited about, book club information and book signing events at the store.