Academics
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2025 WINNER OF THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD AND THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR FICTION Based on Cartarescu's own experience as a teacher,Solenoid submerges us in the mundane details of a diarist's life and spirals into an existential account of history, philosophy and mathematics. Grounded in the reality of communist Romania, it grapples with frightening health care, the absurdities of the education system and the struggles of family life, while investigating other universes and forking paths. In a surreal journey like no other, we visit a tuberculosis preventorium, an anti-death protest movement, a society of dream investigators and a minuscule world of dust mites living on a microscope slide. Combining fiction with autobiography and history, Solenoidsearches for escape routes through the alternate dimensions of life and art, as various monstrous realities erupt within the present.
Mircea Cartarescu is a writer, professor, and journalist who has published more than twenty-five books. His work has received the Formentor Prize (2018), the Thomas Mann Prize (2018), the Austrian State Prize for Literature (2015), and the Vilenica Prize (2011), among many others. His work has been translated in twenty-three languages. His novel Blinding was published by Archipelago in Sean Cotter's English translation.
Mircea Cartarescu, Sean Cotter (Translator)Add a review
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