A natural novel

Having been shortlisted for the Strega Europeo (Rome, 2014) and Gregor von Rezzori (Florence, 2014) and honoured with the full set of literary awards in Bulgaria, the novel On the Physics of Melancholy ranks Georgi Gospodinov among Europe’s most inventive and daring writers. Using the myth of the Minotaur as his central image, the book’s narrator (the author’s alter ego) weaves a labyrinth of stories about his family, jumping between different eras and perspectives, exploring the mindset and dead ends of Eastern Europeans. An incredibly moving yet humorous book about human anxieties, empathy and its loss, which sheds light on issues such as abandonment and isolation. Its original structure and stunning narrative captivated international critics, who hailed it as one of the finest European postmodern novels.

Georgi Gospodinov creates his own version of a ‘natural novel’ drawn from moments of everyday life. With a distinctive sense of humour, the author and narrator of the book expresses the need to come to terms with his broken marriage and his wife’s infidelity. The central character may suffer from attention deficit disorder; he may be trapped in a prejudiced, albeit stoic, assessment of life’s chaotic flow. Whatever the cause, his monologue becomes an original, compelling book, which perfectly captures emptiness and sorrow at its core. With allusive connections to contemporary French philosophy, Georgi Gospodinov shares with us a postmodern novel about personal relationships and their unexpected consequences.

The narrator meets Gaustin, a time-travelling wanderer who has disconnected his life from modern reality and created the ‘clinic for the past’. This is an institution offering an innovative treatment for Alzheimer’s patients: each floor meticulously recreates a decade of the past century. Patients lose their sense of the present and the future and are transported back in time, unlocking and reviving their memories. Gospodinov, with his wonderfully fragmentary writing, proves, once again, that he can surprise us and keep us on our toes. What does dementia mean, what is old age, how does one choose the world in which to live and what to retain of oneself before dying, what does the West mean and what does the East, how far is the nation from the fly? What is death? Combining irony and nostalgia, and alternating between different styles of writing, the author explores the monster of the past and how it affects a life with an uncertain future. ‘It’s not strange,’ Gaustin once told me, ‘it’s always others who die, but never ourselves.’ [Read what Alexandra Ioannidou wrote on our blog about the translation of the book.]( https://ikarosbooks.gr/blog/alexandra-ioannidou-metafrazontas-to-chronokatafigio-tou-georgi-gospodinov)

‘Perhaps the most enviable achievement of Georgi Gospodinov’s writing is the masterful construction of a personal mythology that reflects the trauma, melancholy and soul of an entire people. In Gospodinov’s world, human existence realises that our presence on Earth follows but one path: that of mortality. The Bulgarian author has been described as a ‘poet who writes prose’, and not by chance; his literary universe is inextricably unified. His poetry echoes his fictional narratives, and vice versa: his prose deals with the issues of time and memory in a poetic manner and rhythm. By analogy – or inversely – the reader of this anthology will pass through familiar rooms, crypts and labyrinths, which re-establish the author’s prose cycle. [Excerpt from the note by Avgi Lilli] Includes poems from the collections: Lapidarium [Лапидариум, 1992) The Cherry Tree of a People [Черешата на един народ, 1996) Letters to Gaustin [Писма до Гаустин, 2003) Where We Are Not [Там, където не сме, 2016)

A man sits by his sick father’s bedside, chronicling his life—at times relentlessly, at times tenderly. Until dawn on that final morning they spend together. A father born after the Second World War in Bulgaria. An incurable smoker and a rebel. A man who knew how to fail with heroic self-deprecation. The garden he created in the barren village courtyard that first saved him and then killed him remains his living legacy today: peonies and potatoes, roses and cherry trees – and above all, endless stories. Without him, however, his son’s past begins to crack silently. For the end of our fathers is also the end of a world. Four years after The Time Refuge (International Booker Prize 2023), Georgi Gospodinov presents a heart-rending personal story; a hymn to the closest family bond, told through the melancholic gaze of a poet and the language of a great writer. ‘A book not about death, but about life fading away. There is a difference.’ [Read what Alexandra Ioannidou wrote on our blog about the translation of the book.](https://ikarosbooks.gr/blog/alexandra-ioannidou-metafrazontas-to-vivlio-o-kipouros-ke-o-thanatos-tou-georgi-gospodinov)