Join us for an evening of conversation with one of Europe's greatest living writers, Mircea Cărtărescu, to celebrate the new edition of his novel Blinding. translated by Sean Cotter.
‘We exist between the past and future like the vermiform body of a butterfly, in between its two wings’
Beneath the streets of communist Bucharest linger hidden passageways, lost to memory. Here, sprawling hospitals give way to travelling circuses and underground jazz clubs, and Cartarescu’s childhood, prehistory and visionary fever dreams are woven into the landscape of the city, haunted by secret police and zombie hoards.
Part visceral dream-memoir, part phantasmic pilgrimage, Mircea Cartarescu’s Blinding is one of the most widely heralded literary sensations in contemporary Romania, and a fascinating, kaleidoscopic journey into the past.
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 - Olga Tokarczuk
Cartarescu is no longer writing novels. He is officiating a cult - TLS
One of the greatest literary adventurers in contemporary literature - El Pais
Gripping, impassioned, unexpected--the qualities that the best in literature possesses - Los Angeles Times Book Review
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 - Andrew Solomon
