The Physics of Sorrow

by Georgi Gospodinov Narrated by Toby Stephens

Overview

The “quirky [and] compulsively readable” (New York Times) precursor to the 2023 International Booker Prize-winning Time Shelter.

Written with a “formal playfulness [that] suggests Kundera with A.D.D.” (Village Voice), Georgi Gospodinov's The Physics of Sorrow became an underground cult classic upon its 2012 release. In a radical reimagining of the minotaur myth, a narrator named Georgi meanders through the past to find the melancholy child at the center of it all. Spanning from antiquity to the Anthropocene, he catalogs curious instances of abandonment, recounts scenes of a turbulent boyhood in 1970s Bulgaria, and even has a bizarre run-in with an eccentric flâneur named Gaustine. The result is a profoundly moving portrait of communist Bulgaria, in which the “real quest... is to find a way to live with sadness, to allow it to be a source of empathy and salutary hesitation,” (Garth Greenwell, New Yorker).

Winner of the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature and finalist for both the PEN Literary Award for Translation and the Strega Europeo.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

04/20/2015
Gospodinov's (Natural Novel) quixotic novel is part family saga, part meditation on Greek myths, and part personal history of growing up in Communist Bulgaria. Despite the challenges posed by this mix of styles and material, it's occasionally moving and points toward a book that might have been. The narrator is a Bulgarian writer who considers himself a collector of stories—literally, as he will often pay strangers for interesting anecdotes. He claims that as a child he could slip into others' experiences, and so when he begins to relate stories of his grandfather's youth and soldiering during WWII, he sometimes presents them in the first person. These affecting but confusing scenes are interspersed with images from the story of the Minotaur and its labyrinth. The narrator feels great sympathy toward this misunderstood "monster," and these passages are some of the best. However, the novel rambles across characters, eras, and stories; by the final quarter, the already thin pretense of a central narrative is completely set aside, and the narrator strings together a random assortment of tales and observations he's collected on his travels. Some of these stories sparkle, but the impression is of padding, and the effect is exhausting. The overall sense imparted by Gospodinov's experimental style isn't so much of having read a novel, as of having been presented with a measured amount of writing. Some of it is very fine, but too much is undisciplined and confusing. (Apr.)

From the Publisher

"A reinterpretation of ancient Greek myth, a celebration of story telling, a treatise on nostalgia and aging, a collection of insights into the nature of time, The Physics of Sorrow has it all."—Randy Rosenthal, Tweed's Mag

“[The] real quest in The Physics of Sorrow is to find a way to live with sadness, to allow it to be a source of empathy and salutary hesitation… Chronicling everyday life in Bulgaria means trying to communicate Bulgarian “sadness," which is—to the extent that these things can be disentangled—as much a linguistic as a metaphysical dilemma"—Garth Greenwell, The New Yorker

"Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov's The Physics of Sorrow unites formal experimentation with emotional resonance in a compelling exploration of how and why humans tell stories … Gospodinov ruminates on the mazelike structures of the human brain, of cities, and of books themselves … [and] juxtaposes the grotesque and the beautiful… at once concrete and transcendent … Both an intellectual game and a very human story, The Physics of Sorrow captivates."—Elizabeth C. Keto, The Harvard Crimson

"Gospodinov's THE PHYSICS OF SORROW offers up a beautiful exploration of the inescapable maze-like nature of life. . . . [it] reminds us that we must never forget that we are not alone. We must never lose sense of who we are, who we were, where we come from, and where we're going. And we must never stop sharing the resulting stories of our wondrous explorations with the world at large because we must allow ourselves to feel everything or be doomed to feel nothing at all." —Aaron Westerman, Typographical Era

"Gospodinov forces us to examine our own lives, expectations, and assumptions. He asks us to look outside of ourselves, to myth and family history and national history, to find meaning in a world that often seems cruel and cold. A mixture of grim humor, keen self-reflection, and even a bit of dogged optimism, The Physics of Sorrow is not to be missed." —Bookishly Witty

"A time-traveling empath, [Gospodinov] uses story to call us to look beyond ourselves to what can root us and give our lives meaning in a world that can seem crushingly cold and cruel." —Kristine Morris, Foreward Reviews

Library Journal

06/01/2015
As the protagonist states at the end of this book, "The past, sorrow, literature—only these three weightless whales interest me." In a narrative that only seems to leap about, he makes the Minotaur of ancient Greek literature emblematic of his and Bulgaria's sorrowful past. It says a lot about both that his Minotaur is no fearsome beast but a frightened creature in a dark and friendless place. From a grandfather's near abandonment as a child to "An Official History of the 1980s" to scientific experiments and the relentless sifting of the Minotaur myth (with Scheherazade thrown in to amplify the many side stories), Bulgarian novelist Gospodinov (Natural Novel) follows a thread through many caverns to a final conclusion: "We was." VERDICT Not for those who like a light read but an intriguing way to feel the weight of history and a hard coming of age.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940191603759
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	05/07/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	984,287

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