<p><b>''Compulsively readable'' <i>New York Times</i><br>''Utterly original'' Alberto Manguel</b><br><br><i>In the small and the insignificant - that''s where life hides, that''s where it builds its nest.</i><br><br>Our unnamed narrator is not well. He suffers from attacks of ''pathological empathy'', which cause him to wander unbidden into other people''s memories. He moves from recollection to recollection - from a Bulgarian country fair in 1925, where he meets a Minotaur, to inside the mind of a slug, as it is swallowed by his own Grandfather.<br><br>Part family history, part coming-of-age story, part meditation on life in Communist Europe, <i>The Physics of Sorrow</i> is a dazzlingly inventive, mind-expanding novel from one of Europe''s most important writers.<br><br><b>TRANSLATED FROM THE BULGARIAN BY ANGELA RODEL</b></p>