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A review by gggggggg_g
The Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov
5.0
If "brevity is the soul of wit," then "Physics of Sorrow" is the soul of storytelling. The entirety of the novel is short bursts of eloquence, sometimes deeply moving and sometimes painfully analytical. It is rife with intelligent nostalgia, it reevaluates the heroes and villains of the classics, and it vainly tries to answer the simple questions of life and aging. The central character is the author, the grandfather, time, and the Minotaur in all of us. Open Letters' translated novels continue to confound me.
"'Global Autumn...' The small towns of Normandy gasping under the historical shell of their own past; now they are provincial. There's a cause for historical melancholy for you. The only thing left for them is to nobly bear both their fame and their oblivion. Falaise is a town of 8,000 with an enormous chateau and a fortress wall. The birthplace of the man known as William the Conqueror to some and William the bastard to others. After seven o'clock the town is deserted, I almost said 'devastated.' It smells of hay and herbs. No fortress wall can stop the merciless calvary of the hours."
"'Global Autumn...' The small towns of Normandy gasping under the historical shell of their own past; now they are provincial. There's a cause for historical melancholy for you. The only thing left for them is to nobly bear both their fame and their oblivion. Falaise is a town of 8,000 with an enormous chateau and a fortress wall. The birthplace of the man known as William the Conqueror to some and William the bastard to others. After seven o'clock the town is deserted, I almost said 'devastated.' It smells of hay and herbs. No fortress wall can stop the merciless calvary of the hours."