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. 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. 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. Ten sa z núdze (a vaka neúspechu na literárnom poli. 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. Solenoid je tematicky hutný, týlovo bohatý a textovo objemný semiautobiografický román s prvkami surreálna, ktorého príbeh sa toí okolo fiktívneho rukopisu neúspeného autora. His work has been translated in twenty-three. 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. 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. Mircea Crtrescu is a writer, professor, and journalist who has published more than twenty-five books.

Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu