Cărtărescu, Mircea
Entry updated 6 March 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1956- ) Romanian teacher, poet and author, active from around 1978. He is of some sf interest for his first novel, Visul ["The Dream"] (1989; uncensored version, vt Nostalgia 1993; trans Julian Semilian 2005), where an exorbitant use of the topoi of Fantastika are assembled (and re-assembled through the five disparate sections of the work) into a kaleidoscopic rendering of the fractured reality of a state like Romania during and after the plague of totalitarianism. Giants roam this world (see Great and Small); a central building contains the secrets of the universe (see Library); the music of the spheres is longed for and (deliriously) rediscovered. The butterfly-shaped intertwining narratives contained in the Orbitor ["Blinding"] sequence, beginning with Orbitor, Vol 1: Aripa Stângă (1996; trans Sean Cotter as Blinding, Book One: The Left Wing 2013), are explicitly influenced by the work of Thomas Pynchon, and generate a sense of the world irradiated by obscurely networked conspiracies. The protagonist of Solenoid (2015; trans Sean Cotter 2022) is conveyed to/given visions of existences in other Dimensions, his access provided by the eponymous device constructed from a design by Nikola Tesla.
There is a sense, throughout both Nostalgia and its much later companion, that much of the importance in a post-totalitarian world of stories of this sort lies in the ability to story them in words: to make-believe the future is describable. [JC]
Mircea Cărtărescu
born Bucharest, Romania: 1 June 1956
works (highly selected)
series
Blinding
- Orbitor, Vol 1: Aripa Stângă (Bucharest, Romania: Editura Humanitas, 1996) [Blinding: binding unknown/]
- Blinding, Book One: The Left Wing (New York: Archipelago Books, 2013) [trans by Sean Cotter of the above: pb/from Vasily Kandinsky]
- Orbitor, Vol 2: Corpul ["Blinding, Vol 2: The Body"] (Bucharest, Romania: Editura Humanitas, 2002) [Blinding: binding unknown/]
- Orbitor, Vol 1: Aripa Dreaptă ["Blinding, Vol 2: The Right Wing"] (Bucharest, Romania: Editura Humanitas, 2007) [Blinding: binding unknown/]
individual titles
- Visul ["The Dream"] (Bucharest, Romania: Cartea Românească, 1989) [binding unknown/]
- Solenoid (Bucharest, Romania: Editura Humanitas, 2015) [binding unknown/]
- Solenoid (Dallas, Texas: Deep Vellum Publishing, 2022) [trans by Sean Cotter of the above: pb/]
collections and stories
- Enciclopedia zmeilor ["Encyclopedia of Dragons"] (Bucharest, Romania: Humanitas, 2002) [coll: binding unknown/]
links
previous versions of this entry