Mircea Cartarescu

Solenoid Mircea Cartarescu

"From Mircea Cæartæarescu, author of Blinding: an existence (and eventually a cosmos) created by forking paths. Based on Cæartæarescu's own experience as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist's life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of existence, history, philosophy, and mathematics. On a broad scale, the novel's investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art. The novel is grounded in the reality of Communist Romania in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including long lines for groceries, the absurdities of the education system, and 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, and an extended visit to the minuscule world of dust mites living on a microscope slide. Combining history with fiction- the scientists Nicola 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"--