Nostalgia

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'Cartarescu is one of the great literary voices of Central Europe' Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Prize winner and author of Flights 
 
'A Danubian Narnia. . . his writing delivers a rainbow-hued riot of fantasy, imagination and invention' Boyd Tonkin, Spectator 
 
A dreamlike novel of memory and magic, Nostalgia turns the dark world of Communist Bucharest into a place of strange enchantments. Here a man plays increasingly death-defying games of Russian Roulette, a child messiah works his magic in the tenements, a young man explores gender boundaries, a woman relives her youth and an architect becomes obsessed with the sound of his new car horn - with unexpected consequences. 
 
Blending reality and symbolism, time and myth, this is a cult masterwork from Romania's most celebrated writer.

Cartarescu is one of the great literary voices of Central Europe. He daringly questions our usual way of looking at the world, suggesting that rationalism is merely an attempt to create order. In fact, the world is made up of the nuances of our fantasies

A Danubian Narnia. . . his writing delivers a rainbow-hued riot of fantasy, imagination and invention. . . If you looked for the perfect director to film Nostalgia, a joint effort by Guillermo del Toro and Terry Gilliam might just do the trick

Fiendishly clever, devilishly humorous and stunningly ambitious. . . one of Romania's most eminent novelists has finally reached Britain. It's been long overdue

Of a rare and wondrous brilliance . . . Julian Semilian's translation of this masterpiece is a heroic achievement

Cartarescu is not only a sophisticated, compelling storyteller but a first-class wordsmith . . . Between them these stories bring forth a fabulous narrative universe, a place where the ordinary and extraordinary intermingle and miracles are a matter of routine

Visionary and tormented. . . mixes history, autobiography and magic realism. There are hints of Bulgakov as well as an aura of Donald Cammell's and Nicolas Roeg's cult 1970 film Performance; a whirlwind of seedy glamour and despair that is itself a reflection of a nightmarish totalitarian state, as well as a scintillatingly detailed portrait of adolescence and retrospective longing

A timeless invitation to dream and embrace the comforting power of personal memory, the only sure bulwark against the effects of totalitarian control. . . Gripping, impassioned, unexpected -- the qualities that the best in literature possesses

If mind-warping literature is your thing, read this book, then read it again

A bright star on the firmament of European literature

Creator of a universe that's caught between dream and reality, Cartarescu is a revelation

Romania's leading novelist and poet. . . Cartarescu's phantasmagorical world is similar to Dalí's dreamscapes

Mircea Cartarescu (Author) Mircea Cartarescu was born in Bucharest in 1956. His novels and poetry are widely considered to be the best writing to emerge from post-communist Romania. His books, including the trilogy Blinding, Solenoid and Nostalgia have been translated into over twenty languages. Solenoid was longlisted for the International Booker Prize and he has received many awards, including most recently the Dublin Literary Award, the Thomas Mann Prize and the Prix Formentor. Julian Semilian (Translator) Julian Semilian is a translator, poet and filmmaker. He currently teaches at the North Carolina School of the Arts, after a twenty-four-year career as a film editor in Hollywood.

'Gripping, impassioned, unexpected' Los Angeles Times 
 
A dreamlike novel of memory and magic, Nostalgia turns the dark world of Communist Bucharest into a place of strange enchantments. Here a man plays increasingly death-defying games of Russian Roulette, a child messiah works his magic in the tenements, a young man explores gender boundaries, a woman relives her youth and an architect becomes obsessed with the sound of his new car horn - with unexpected consequences. Blending reality and symbolism, time and myth, this is a cult masterwork from Romania's most celebrated writer.

Mircea Cartarescu

Sean Cotter

Visionary, surreal, exhilarating... Almost as if David Lynch had dramatised the prophetic books of William Blake

Nobody better probes the disconcerting vulnerability of our existence, always, ultimately, alone; looking on a bewildering world that refuses to console us, and no writer does it with such creative intelligence. The next two volumes can't arrive soon enough

This is writing of overwhelming accomplishment... Reading Blinding is like sinking into the humus of a mind, a vast, tangled network of memory and fantasy

Vivid, sumptuous... a rich, disturbing exploration of our sense of time

Mircea Cartarescu’s writing is dreamlike in the truest sense... It is an effluence – prose at times decadently grim and at others shimmering and ethereal – that this reader, like a dog, couldn't help but lap up

A wild history of Bucharest in the 20th century... Blinding reawakens the perceptual imagination and gifts us new insight

Cartarescu is no longer writing novels. He is officiating a cult

One of the greatest literary adventurers in contemporary literature

Gripping, impassioned, unexpected--the qualities that the best in literature possesses

Cartarescu is one of the great literary voices of Central Europe. He daringly questions our usual way of looking at the world, suggesting that rationalism is merely an attempt to create order. In fact, the world is made up of the nuances of our fantasies

Fluidly translated by Sean Cotter… the book has a cinematic quality that we don’t so much read as drift through — as in an amusement park ride. What fantastic notion, or iteration of metamorphosing insect will pop out and regale us next? If you’re game for a mystical mind-bend, give Blinding a go

In this wise, stunning novel, everything is divided: the narrator; the history through which that narrator lives; the very city of Bucharest. Unlike many authors who play at the edges of what makes fiction fictive or what can be said to constitute reality, Cartarescu manages to keep his profundity engaging, his irony humorous, his wit acid but not cruel

Mircea Cartarescu

Praise for Blinding: The Left Wing

Visionary, surreal, exhilarating... Almost as if David Lynch had dramatised the prophetic books of William Blake

Nobody better probes the disconcerting vulnerability of our existence, always, ultimately, alone; looking on a bewildering world that refuses to console us, and no writer does it with such creative intelligence. The ...

This is writing of overwhelming accomplishment... Reading Blinding is like sinking into the humus of a mind, a vast, tangled network of memory and fantasy

Visionary, surreal, exhilarating... Almost as if David Lynch had dramatised the prophetic books of William Blake

Nobody better probes the disconcerting vulnerability of our existence, always, ultimately, alone; looking on a bewildering world that refuses to console us, and no writer does it with such creative intelligence. The ...

This is writing of overwhelming accomplishment... Reading Blinding is like sinking into the humus of a mind, a vast, tangled network of memory and fantasy

Visionary, surreal, exhilarating... Almost as if David Lynch had dramatised the prophetic books of William Blake

Nobody better probes the disconcerting vulnerability of our existence, always, ultimately, alone; looking on a bewildering world that refuses to console us, and no writer does it with such creative intelligence. The ...

This is writing of overwhelming accomplishment... Reading Blinding is like sinking into the humus of a mind, a vast, tangled network of memory and fantasy

Books by Mircea Cartarescu

Series by Mircea Cartarescu

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