Name: Solenoid
SKU: 61996399
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)
Author: Mircea Cartarescu
ISBN: 9781805333197

Type

Physical Book

Author

Mircea Cartarescu

Publisher

Pushkin Press

Language

English

Format

Paperback

Weight

0.46

ISBN13

9781805333197

Solenoid

Mircea Cartarescu (Author) · Pushkin Press · Paperback

1 review

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Synopsis "Solenoid"

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, Solenoid searches for escape routes through the alternate dimensions of life and art, as various monstrous realities erupt within the present.

Mircea Cartarescu

(Author)

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Mircea Cartarescu was born on June 1, 1956 in Bucharest, Romania into a middle-class family. From an early age, he showed a strong interest in literature and music, influenced by the counterculture of the 60s and 70s. He pursued his studies at the University of Bucharest, in the faculty of letters where he earned a PhD with a fascinating thesis on Romanian postmodernism. He has been a university professor, editor, and contributor to literary magazines, as well as an active member of the Romanian PEN Club and the European Cultural Parliament.

He began his literary career as a poet in 1978 and published his first book, Faurir, vitrin, fotografii (1980), which earned him the Romanian Writers' Union Award. His work is characterized by lyrical, dreamlike, and experimental prose, in which the boundary between reality and dream blurs. He has explored themes such as memory, identity, recent Romanian history, and the transformative power of literature.

He was awarded the prestigious Formentor Prize for Literature, and has received awards of the importance of the Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding, the Gregor von Rezzori Prize, the Thomas Mann Prize, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and the FIL Prize for Literature in Romance Languages. His texts have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

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