Solenoid
Mircea CartarescuBased on Cărtărescu's own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist's life & quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, & mathematics. One character asks another: when you rush into the burning building, will you save the newborn or the artwork? On a broad scale, the novel's investigations of other universes, dimensions, & timelines reconcile the realms of life & art.
The novel is grounded in the reality of late 1970s/early 1980s Communist Romania, including long lines for groceries, the absurdities of the education system, & the misery of family life. The text includes sequences in a tuberculosis sanatorium, an encounter with an anti-death protest movement, a society of dream investigators, & an extended visit to the miniscule world of dust mites living on a microscope slide.
Combining fiction with autobiography & history— the scientists Nicolae Tesla & George Boole, for example, appear alongside the Voynich manuscript—Solenoid ruminates on the exchanges possible between the alternate dimensions of life & art, as various, monstrous dimensions erupt within the Communist present.
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Mircea Cărtărescu is a writer, professor, & journalist who has published more than 25 books. His work has received the Formentor Prize (2018), the Thomas Mann Prize (2018), the Austrian State Prize for Literature (2015), & the Vilenica Prize (2011), among many others. His work has been translated in 23 languages. His novel Blinding was published by Archipelago in Sean Cotter's English translation.
Sean Cotter is a translator & professor of literature & translation at the University of Texas at Dallas. He translated T.O. Bobe’s Curl & Nichita Stănescu’s Wheel with a Single Spoke & Other Poems.