It would be easy to say that Cărtărescu’s work is Kafkaesque. Though, it is his brilliant, clear and disquieting prose that fills you quite immediately with a desire to explore a world that seems to be collapsing, slowly, and with such sharp clarity, you simply can’t stop reading.
Cărtărescu is not just an important writer of Eastern Europe, he is a linguist for the mind’s response to oppression, and in this way, his work is crucial for all of us living in the specter of democracy’s demise. Though one must enter into his world carefully, and for western readers with some understanding of the context for his brilliant, claustrophobic, and driving narrative: we are being invited into how the mind adapts, liberates or stays trapped in the history of and continued reality of nationalistic dictatorship. Mircea Cărtărescu is considered to be the great contemporary writer of Romania, and with his new work, Solenoid (beautifully translated by Sean Cotter) we are provided an insight into why. Combining fiction with autobiography and history- the scientists Nicolae Tesla and George Boole, for example, appear alongside the Voynich manuscript-Solenoid ruminates on the exchanges possible between the alternate dimensions of life and art, as various, monstrous dimensions erupt within the Communist present.The Haunting Magic of Mircea Cărtărescu’s Solenoid
The text includes sequences in a tuberculosis sanatorium, an encounter with an anti-death protest movement, a society of dream investigators, and an extended visit to the miniscule world of dust mites living on a microscope slide. 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, and the misery of family life. 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, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art. Based on Cartarescu's own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist's life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by the New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, The Financial Times, Words Without Borders A highly-acclaimed master work of fiction from Cartarescu, author of Blinding: an existence (and eventually a cosmos) created by forking paths.
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