According to The New Yorker, "Georgi's 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…"[5] Gospodinov was born 7 January 1968 in Yambol, Bulgaria.

[7][8] Gospodinov began writing poetry in the early 1990s, publishing two books Lapidarium (Лапидариум, 1992) and The cherry of a people (Черешата на един народ, 1996) which received national literary prizes[which?]

Described by The New Yorker as an "anarchic, experimental debut",[9] and by The Guardian as "both earthy and intellectual", the novel explores the life of a young writer in post-communism Bulgaria.

According to Neue Zurcher Zeitung "with Physics of Sorrow Gospodinov launches not only the Bulgarian literature but also himself in the European writers' first league.

It was described by author Olga Tokarczuk as "the most exquisite kind of literature, on our perception of time and its passing, written in a masterful and totally unpredictable style.

"[15] Newspaper La Repubblica described Gospodinov as "a Proust coming from the East",[2] while author Sandro Veronesi described Time Shelter as "a powerful and brilliant novel: clear-sighted, foreboding, enigmatic.