A mesmerizing novel about the magical and gritty world of Bucharest in the 1980s by a celebrated Eastern European writer
Mircea Cartarescu (Author)
Mircea Cartarescu was born in Bucharest in 1956. His novels and
poetry are widely considered to be the best writing to emerge from
post-communist Romania. His books have been translated into
fourteen languages and he has received many awards, including most
recently the Thomas Mann Prize and the Prix Formentor.
Julian Semilian (Translator)
Julian Semilian is a translator, poet and filmmaker. He currently
teaches at the North Carolina School of the Arts, after a
twenty-four-year career as a film editor in Hollywood.
Cartarescu is one of the great literary voices of Central Europe.
He daringly questions our usual way of looking at the world,
suggesting that rationalism is merely an attempt to create order.
In fact, the world is made up of the nuances of our fantasies
*Olga Tokarczuk, author of Flights*
A Danubian Narnia. . . his writing delivers a rainbow-hued riot of
fantasy, imagination and invention. . . If you looked for the
perfect director to film Nostalgia, a joint effort by Guillermo del
Toro and Terry Gilliam might just do the trick
*Spectator*
Fiendishly clever, devilishly humorous and stunningly ambitious. .
. one of Romania's most eminent novelists has finally reached
Britain. It's been long overdue
*Prospect*
Of a rare and wondrous brilliance . . . Julian Semilian's
translation of this masterpiece is a heroic achievement
*Literary Review*
Cartarescu is not only a sophisticated, compelling storyteller but
a first-class wordsmith . . . Between them these stories bring
forth a fabulous narrative universe, a place where the ordinary and
extraordinary intermingle and miracles are a matter of routine
*TLS*
Visionary and tormented. . . mixes history, autobiography and magic
realism. There are hints of Bulgakov as well as an aura of Donald
Cammell's and Nicolas Roeg's cult 1970 film Performance; a
whirlwind of seedy glamour and despair that is itself a reflection
of a nightmarish totalitarian state, as well as a scintillatingly
detailed portrait of adolescence and retrospective longing
*Irish Times*
A timeless invitation to dream and embrace the comforting power of
personal memory, the only sure bulwark against the effects of
totalitarian control. . . Gripping, impassioned, unexpected -- the
qualities that the best in literature possesses
*Los Angeles Times*
If mind-warping literature is your thing, read this book, then read
it again
*San Francisco Chronicle*
A bright star on the firmament of European literature
*Le Monde*
Creator of a universe that's caught between dream and reality,
Cartarescu is a revelation
*El Pais*
Romania's leading novelist and poet. . . Cartarescu's
phantasmagorical world is similar to Dalí's dreamscapes
*Kirkus*
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