And Other Stories (Writings From An Unbound Europe)

Wildly imaginative and endlessly entertaining, Georgi Gospodinov's short stories provide a hint of the narrative complexity of Borges and a whiff of the gritty realism of pre- and post-Communist life in Eastern Europe. These stories within stories and contemporary fables--whether a tongue-in-cheek crime story or the Christmas tale of apig, a language game leading to an unexpected ephiphany or to an inward-looking tale built on the complexity of a puzzle box--come together in unique and surprising ways, offering readers a kaleidoscopic experience from one of Bulgaria's most critically acclaimed authors.

Literature & Fiction

Gospodinov, Georgi

Short Stories & Anthologies

Northwestern University Press

Time Shelter: A Novel

New Yorker • Best Books of 2022\nAn award-winning international sensation―with a second-act dystopian twist―Time Shelter is a tour de force set in a world clamoring for the past before it forgets. 
“At one point they tried to calculate when time began, when exactly the earth had been created,” begins Time Shelter’s enigmatic narrator, who will go unnamed. “In the mid–seventeenth century, the Irish bishop Ussher calculated not only the exact year, but also a starting date: October 22, 4,004 years before Christ.” But for our narrator, time as he knows it begins when he meets Gaustine, a “vagrant in time” who has distanced his life from contemporary reality by reading old news, wearing tattered old clothes, and haunting the lost avenues of the twentieth century. 
In an apricot-colored building in Zurich, surrounded by curiously planted forget-me-nots, Gaustine has opened the first “clinic for the past,” an institution that offers an inspired treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a past decade in minute detail, allowing patients to transport themselves back in time to unlock what is left of their fading memories. Serving as Gaustine’s assistant, the narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to nostalgic scents and even wisps of afternoon light. But as the charade becomes more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic to escape from the dead-end of their daily lives―a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present. Through sharply satirical, labyrinth-like vignettes reminiscent of Italo Calvino and Franz Kafka, the narrator recounts in breathtaking prose just how he became entrenched in a plot to stop time itself. 
“A trickster at heart, and often very funny” (Garth Greenwell, The New Yorker), prolific Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov masterfully stalks the tragedies of the last century, including our own, in what becomes a haunting and eerily prescient novel teeming with ideas. Exquisitely translated by Angela Rodel, Time Shelter is a truly unforgettable classic from “one of Europe’s most fascinating and irreplaceable novelists” (Dave Eggers). 19 black-and-white drawings

Genre Fiction

Liveright

Written with a "formal playfulness [that] suggests Kundera with A.D.D." (illage 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 constructs the story of his life like a labyrinth, meandering 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 Finalist for the PEN Literary Award for Translation and the Strega Europeo

The Physics of Sorrow: A Novel

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

In Time Shelter, an enigmatic flâneur named Gaustine opens a ‘clinic for the past’ that offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time.\nAs Gaustine’s assistant, the unnamed narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to scents and even afternoon light. But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a ‘time shelter’, hoping to escape from the horrors of our present – a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present.\nIntricately crafted, and eloquently translated by Angela Rodel, Time Shelter cements Georgi Gospodinov’s reputation as one of the indispensable writers of our times, a major voice in international literature.

Time Shelter : Winner of the International Booker Prize 2023

Hachette

"Natural Novel is simultaneously erudite and funny a lucky combination that rarely occurs in Bulgarian books." Kapital

Natural Novel (Eastern European Literature)

Literary

Dalkey Archive Press

"At one point they tried to calculate when time began, when exactly the earth had been created," begins Time Shelter's enigmatic narrator, who goes unnamed. "In the mid-seventeenth century, the Irish bishop Ussher calculated not only the exact year, but also a starting date: October 22, 4,004 years before Christ." But for our narrator, time as he knows it begins when he meets Gaustine, a "vagrant in time" who has distanced his life from contemporary reality by reading old news, wearing tattered old clothes, and haunting the lost avenues of the twentieth century. In an apricot-colored building in Zurich, surrounded by curiously planted forget-me-nots, Gaustine has opened the first "clinic for the past," an institution that offers an inspired treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces a past decade in minute detail, allowing patients to transport themselves back in time to unlock what is left of their fading memories. Serving as Gaustine's assistant, the narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to nostalgic scents and even wisps of afternoon light. But as the charade becomes more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic to escape from the dead-end of their daily lives&#8213;a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present. Through sharply satirical, labyrinth-like vignettes reminiscent of Italo Calvino and Franz Kafka, the narrator recounts in breathtaking prose just how he became entrenched in a plot to stop time itself.

Time Shelter

Dreamscape Media

Some smuggle cigarettes or alcohol, others weapons, but for renowned Bulgarian novelist Georgi Gospodinov, the most dangerous contraband is carried by writers, who surreptitiously move stories across borders. In The Story Smuggler, Gospodinov explores how smugglers, writers, and translators are all involved in transporting whatever may be desired, valued, missing, repressed, or forbidden. There’s a melancholic tone here, as Gospodinov’s exploration focuses on his childhood in Communist Bulgaria and on the fantasies of other lives and places that this childhood engendered. Accompanying the text are drawings by award-winning Bulgarian animator and graphic artist Theodore Ushev, adding a further layer to its exposition of border-crossing.

The Story Smuggler (Volume 29) (Cahiers)

Sylph Editions

Finalist for the 2015 PEN Literary Award for Translation
Winner of the 2016 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature"A quirky, compulsively readable book that deftly hints at the emptiness and sadness at its core."—New York TimesA finalist for both the Strega Europeo and Gregor von Rezzori awards (and winner of every Bulgarian honor possible), The Physics of Sorrow reaffirms Georgi Gospodinov's place as one of Europe's most inventive and daring writers.
Using the myth of the Minotaur as its organizing image, the narrator of Gospodinov's long-awaited novel 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. Incredibly moving—such as with the story of his grandfather accidentally being left behind at a mill—and extraordinarily funny—see the section on the awfulness of the question "how are you?"—Physics is a book that you can inhabit, tracing connections, following the narrator down various "side passages," getting pleasantly lost in the various stories and empathizing with the sorrowful, misunderstood Minotaur at the center of it all.
Like the work of Dave Eggers, Tom McCarthy, and Dubravka Ugresic, The Physics of Sorrow draws you in with its unique structure, humanitarian concerns, and stunning storytelling.
Georgi Gospodinov was born in 1968 and is one of the most translated contemporary Bulgarian writers. His first novel, Natural Novel was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2005 and was praised by the New Yorker, New York Times, and several other prestigious review outlets. A collection of his short stories, And Other Stories was published by Northwestern University Press. The Physics of Sorrow is his second novel.
Angela Rodel earned an M.A. in linguistics from UCLA and received a Fulbright Fellowship to study and learn Bulgarian. In 2010 she won a PEN Translation Fund Grant for Georgi Tenev's short story collection. She is one of the most prolific translators of Bulgarian literature working today and received an NEA Fellowship for her translation of Gospodinov's The Physics of Sorrow.

The Physics of Sorrow

Open Letter

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gospodinov, Georgi. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gospodinov, Georgi

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gospodinov, Georgi. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

And Other Stories (Writings From An Unbound Europe)

And Other Stories (Writings From An Unbound Europe)

Time Shelter: A Novel

The Physics of Sorrow: A Novel

Time Shelter: A Novel

Time Shelter : Winner of the International Booker Prize 2023

Natural Novel (Eastern European Literature)

Time Shelter

The Story Smuggler (Volume 29) (Cahiers)

The Physics of Sorrow