Georgi Gospodinov The Physics of Sorrow : From the International Booker

Compulsively readable New York TimesUtterly original Alberto ManguelIn the small and the insignificant thats where life hides, thats 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 peoples 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 comingofage story, part meditation on life in Communist Europe, The Physics of Sorrow is a dazzlingly inventive, mindexpanding novel from one of Europes most important writers. TRANSLATED FROM THE BULGARIAN BY ANGELA RODEL | Georgi Gospodinov The Physics of Sorrow : From the International Booker