It all starts innocently: the boy gets to the fair, clutching a coin that he received from his father. In one of the tents, he sees a Minotaur — a creature that will permanently deprive him of speech and peace. This novel is an exploration of the labyrinth: the places where we wander and find ourselves, the places where we encounter the most incredible (and quite ordinary) stories, the places where we eventually reach the Minotaur-a creature that may well be ourselves many years ago. A Minotaur-a child lost in the midst of a noisy fair. In this novel, Georgi Gospodinov, one of the most skilled storytellers of modern European literature, is in great shape. He unwinds the threads of numerous stories in front of us in order to finally weave them into a tight knot, inside which is memory and a slight sadness. About the book Georgi Gospodinov is one of the most prominent contemporary Bulgarian authors, whose work has already gained international recognition. His novel "physics of sadness", awarded prestigious literary awards, was published in Ukrainian by the publishing house "Black Sheep". The book combines autobiographical motifs with mythological allusions, addressing personal childhood experiences, collective memory, and historical circumstances that shape a person. In the center of the story is a boy who is able to relive other people's memories and pain as if he were his own. Its history opens a maze where the ancient Greek myth of the Minotaur, family secrets, and the experience of life in Bulgaria in the second half of the XX century coexist side by side. This is not a linear plot, but a series of intertwined stories that make up a kind of time capsule – from personal tragedies to collective shadows of the past that do not disappear even in the present. The atmosphere of the book is based on the feeling of loss and the search for meaning, but at the same time it opens up a new dimension of empathy – the ability to share someone else's pain and understand it as your own. The author talks about childhood, aging, time, and sadness as universal topics that concern everyone.