Mircea Cărtărescu in conversation with Ileana Marin

Mircea Cărtărescu, one of Romania’s most well-known contemporary authors, is embarking on a US book tour for Solenoid. He will be making a stop at the Seattle Public Library on April 5 at 7pm!

“[S]omething of a masterpiece . . . Solenoid synthesizes and subtly mocks elements of autofiction and history fiction by way of science fiction… The mesmerizing beauty of creation, of reality giving way to itself: that, above all, lies behind the doors of Solenoid.” —Federico Perelmuter, Astra Magazine

This event is made possible by Cărtărescu’s American publisher Deep Vellum, the Romanian Cultural Institute, and the American Romanian Cultural Society.

University of Washington scholar Ileana Marin, co-founder and President of the American Romanian Cultural Society, will join in conversation.

Venue: Seattle Public Library (Central Branch), Microsoft Auditorium, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104
Time: 7pm
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required in advance.

RSVP

This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book, or request a hold at your local library.
Please note: Solenoid is currently out of stock. A reprint from the publisher is expected soon and copies of Solenoid will be made available at the event.

About Solenoid. . .

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by the New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, The Financial Times, Words Without Borders

A highly-acclaimed master work of fiction from Cărtărescu, author of Blinding: an existence (and eventually a cosmos) created by forking paths.

Based on Cărtărescu’s own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist’s life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. One character asks another: when you rush into the burning building, will you save the newborn or the artwork? 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 late 1970s/early 1980s Communist Romania, 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 miniscule world of dust mites living on a microscope slide.

Combining fiction with autobiography and history— the scientists Nicolae 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.

 Mircea Cărtărescu is a writer, professor, and journalist who has published more than twenty-five books. His work has received the Formentor Prize (2018), the Thomas Mann Prize (2018), the Austrian State Prize for Literature (2015), and the Vilenica Prize (2011), among many others. His work has been translated into twenty-three languages. His novel Blinding was published by Archipelago in Sean Cotter’s English translation. His novel Solenoid, translated by Cotter and published by Deep Vellum, was named one of the best books of 2022 by the New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, The Financial Times, and Words Without Borders.

 Ileana Marin teaches interdisciplinary courses at the University of Washington, Seattle, and at the Center of Excellence in Image Studies of the University of Bucharest, where she chairs the “Space, Image, Text, Territory” Doctoral School. She has published books on tragic myths, Pre-Raphaelite artists, and on Victorian aesthetics of erasure in fiction and illustration. Several of her conference papers on the de-humanizing power of art, the artistic legacy of communism, and the materiality of texts have been selected for publication in prestigious journals and collective volumes. Increasingly interested in multimediality, she has focused on artists’ books, E-Literature, and digital arts. Since 2020, she has taken on translating Romanian female writers. She is co-founder, and currently the President of the Seattle non-profit American Romanian Cultural Society.