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Solenoid

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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.

©2022 Sean Cotter (P)2023 Tantor Genre Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature Fiction
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So different from everything I have read before and very compelling, even if a plot is not so obvious, at least in the beginning. It is grounded in the reality of communist Romania under Ceausescu, with all its madness and poverty, mixed with autobiographical elements and surreal explorations of dreams and the subconscious. There is science, there is art, there is philosophy even some humour here and there. This doesn't quite cover it but I don't want to give too much away.

Unlike anything I have read before

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