Table of Contents

Epigraphy

Prologue

The Bread of Sorrow

Against an Abandonment: The Case of M.

The Yellow House

Time Bomb (To Be Opened after the End of the World)

The Green Box

The Buyer of Stories

The Global Autumn

An Elementary Physics of Sorrow

Endings

Epilogue

Promotional Information

Participate in the CBSD Galley Box and send copies to the top 50 or so Open Letter bookstore accounts: City Lights, McNally Jackson, Elliot Bay, etc.

Approximately 200 advance copies sent to primary publications (including any that reviewed Natural Novel). This list includes: New York Times, SF Chronicle, LA Times, n+1, New York Review of Books, The Nation, Bookforum, The Believer, Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker, Rain Taxi, Time Out New York/Chicago, World Literature Today, Flavorwire, Washington Post, BOMB, Literary Review, Complete Review, Words Without Borders, B&N Review, Harper's, Shelf Awareness, Quarterly Conversation, Chicago Tribune, Typographical Era, Slate, Salon, etc. Also sent to the following trade publications: Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, Library Journal.

Advance copies also sent to members of the NBCC Award Committee and the Best Translated Book Award Fiction Committee, along with the group of literary tastemakers, like Scott Esposito and Michael Orthofer, interested in literary European fiction.

Giveaway of 25 copies on GoodReads.

Promote on Three Percent and on social media via Open Letter's FB & Twitter accounts (over 4,200 likes on FB; almost 9,200 followers on Twitter).

An excerpt is already appearing in Tin House, and it's likely that more will follow.

Ebook available and will be mentioned on all press release materials, Open Letter website, etc.

About the Author

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.

Reviews

"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