Solenoid

WINNER OF THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD AND THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR FICTIONBased on Cartarescu's own experience as a teacher, Solenoid submerges us in the mundane details of a diarist's life and spirals into an existential account of history, philosophy and mathematics. Grounded in the reality of communist Romania, it grapples with frightening health care, the absurdities of the education system and the struggles of family life, while investigating other universes and forking paths. In a surreal journey like no other, we visit a tuberculosis preventorium, an anti-death protest movement, a society of dream investigators and a minuscule world of dust mites living on a microscope slide. Combining fiction with autobiography and history, Solenoid searches for escape routes through the alternate dimensions of life and art, as various monstrous realities erupt within the present. PRAISE FOR SOLENOID:'Mircea Cartarescu is no longer writing novels. He is officiating a cult' TLS'An engrossing study of a cerebral antihero, who longs to escape his earthly existence' New York Times'Extraordinary and baroque A bravura performance' The Nation'An anti-novel that for all purposes should not exist but still does despite itself, thanks to the overpowering talents of the author and the translator' Anton Hur'Surreal and viscerally political' FT'Nothing short of remarkable' Los Angeles Review of Books'A masterwork of Kafkaesque strangeness, brilliantly conceived and written' Kirkus Reviews