Solenoid

Mircea Cărtărescu

Feb 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Paul Boehmer

About this audiobook

A highly-acclaimed master work of fiction from Cartarescu, author of Blinding Based on Cartarescu'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, Solenoid ruminates on the exchanges possible between the alternate dimensions of life and art, as various, monstrous dimensions erupt within the Communist present.

About the author

Mircea Cartarescu is a writer, professor, and journalist who has published more than twenty-five books. His work has received the Formentor Prize, the Thomas Mann Prize, the Austrian State Prize for Literature, and the Vilenica Prize, among many others. His work has been translated in twenty-three languages.

Paul Boehmer is a seasoned actor who has appeared on Broadway, film, and television, including The Thomas Crown Affair and All My Children. Coinciding with another of his passions, sci-fi, Paul has been cast in various roles in many episodes of Star Trek.

Sean Cotter is a translator and professor of literature and translation at the University of Texas at Dallas. A previous National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow, Cotter is the translator of eleven books, including T. O. Bobe's Curl and Nichita Stanescu's Wheel with a Single Spoke and Other Poems.