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That’s the lately printed and translated Romanian novel by Mircea Cartarescu. I’ve simply completed studying it, and am happy to announce {that a} new main European novel of concepts is upon us. I don’t put it up with Ferrante or Knausgaard, however it’s on the subsequent degree under. Consider it as a mix of Knausgaard (autofiction), Joyce (Bucharest filling in for Dublin), and the surrealism of Kafka. From the NYT:
It’s the journal-cum-antinovel of a schoolteacher reflecting on his youth, his mom, his job, his disturbing goals and his overwhelming instinct that the anomalies of his life represent an inscrutable sample.
GPT has I believe learn the Romanian critiques, and has a superb take:
Cartarescu‘s Solenoid is a sprawling, labyrinthine, and visionary novel that explores the fundamental themes of id, reminiscence, creativity, and transcendence. The narrator, a pissed off author and disillusioned trainer in Bucharest, recounts his life story, his goals, his hallucinations, and his encounters with numerous eccentric characters and phenomena, such as a big solenoid, a steel coil that escaping the oppressive and absurd circumstances of his existence. He additionally displays on his personal private and cultural historical past, his childhood traumas, his household secrets and techniques, his sexual and religious experiences, and his creative aspirations. The novel is wealthy in intertextual and metaphysical references, starting from Kafka, Borges, and Proust to Gnosticism, Kabbalah, and Jap mysticism. The novel challenges the standard boundaries of style, time, and house, creating a fancy and authentic literary cosmos that blends realism, fantasy, horror, and science fiction.
I’ve been predicting this will probably be an incredible yr for fiction, most of all fiction in translation, and thus far it’s off to a beautiful begin. You should purchase the e book right here.
The publish *Solenoid* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
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