For all Gospodinov’s obsession with sorrow, he is a trickster at heart, and often very funny.—Garth Greenwell, The New Yorker

There is something of Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man here, furiously attempting to write the world before it’s all swept away... the result is a powerful toast to living.—Matthew Janney, Financial Times

Brilliant . . . Elegantly translated by Angela Rodel, The Physics of Sorrow is a fragmented novel that coheres into a remarkable, thought-provoking whole. It is a winding labyrinth through Bulgarian communism, art, literature, history, the personal past, love, sorrow, and so much more. —Martha Anne Toll, NPR

The Physics of Sorrow is a novel to get lost in and a desperate struggle to look everywhere — in history, politics, science, myth, literature, and Tamagotchi (really) — to make one’s place in it all make sense. —Polygon

In this swirling, ruminative novel, translated by Rodel, award-winning Bulgarian poet, playwright, and novelist Gospodinov takes the mythological minotaur as the central figure in a metafictional narrative that leaps through time and space, from King Minos’ palace to communist Bulgaria, from politics to quantum physics . . . A playful, profound meditation on storytelling and time.—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

There are very few novels that appear to a seasoned reader as utterly original: The Physics of Sorrow is one of these rare books. —Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading