The work of Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu came to my attention in late 2019, by way of a review of his novel Solenoid at The Untranslated weblog. While Solenoid remained inaccessible to English-language readers at that point, I saw that two of his other books had been translated: Nostalgia, and the first volume of his trilogy Blinding (with an excerpt from the former, moreover, available on-line).
Around the time I placed an order for Nostalgia, I realised I’d already made an accidental acquaintance with some its author’s poetry, thanks to the inclusion of ten of his poems in an anthology called When the Tunnels Meet (1996). This was the culmination of a project in which ten Romanian poets were ‘twinned’ with Irish ones to produce translations of each others' work, Cărtărescu being paired with Medbh McGuckian. Those poems had a conversational tone (suggestive, perhaps, of American influences), and low-key, urban settings. Some struck me as a tad prosaic: I didn’t see any sign in them of the extravagant (and often poetic) surrealism that so often lights up his prose.
I loved Nostalgia, whereas Blinding: the Left Wing, though scarcely less impressive, left me with somewhat mixed feelings. Now, at last, I’ve also read Solenoid, published last year by Deep Vellum in Sean Cotter’s excellent translation. While I think one’s first encounter with Cărtărescu’s prose is always liable to be the most memorable, Solenoid is a more ambitious and coherent book than Nostalgia and intermixes its grandiose flights of fancy with down-to-earth realism in a more purposeful way than in Blinding. It’s not without some significant flaws, but I loved the whole well enough to have no qualms about overlooking those of its parts I liked less.