'Cartarescu is one of the great literary voices of Central Europe' Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Prize winner and author of Flights\n'A Danubian Narnia. . . his writing delivers a rainbow-hued riot of fantasy, imagination and invention' Boyd Tonkin, Spectator\nA dreamlike novel of memory and magic, Nostalgia turns the dark world of Communist Bucharest into a place of strange enchantments. Here a man plays increasingly death-defying games of Russian Roulette, a child messiah works his magic in the tenements, a young man explores gender boundaries, a woman relives her youth and an architect becomes obsessed with the sound of his new car horn - with unexpected consequences.\nBlending reality and symbolism, time and myth, this is a cult masterwork from Romania's most celebrated writer.

Nostalgia (Penguin Modern Classics)

Literature & Fiction

Mircea Cărtărescu

Contemporary

Penguin Classics

Nostalgia

A stunning translation of one of Romania's foremost authors. Mircea Cartarescu, born in 1956, is one of Romania's leading novelists and poets. This translation of his 1989 novel Nostalgia, writes Andrei Codrescu, "introduces to English a writer who has always had a place reserved for him in a constellation that includes the Brothers Grimm, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Bruno Schulz, Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Milan Kundera, and Milorad Pavic, to mention just a few." Like most of his literary contemporaries of the avant-garde Eighties Generation, his major work has been translated into several European languages, with the notable exception, until now, of English. Readers opening the pages of Nostalgia should brace themselves for a verbal tidal wave of the imagination that will wash away previous ideas of what a novel is or ought to be. Although each of its five chapters is separate and stands alone, a thematic, even mesmeric harmony finds itself in children's games, the music of the spheres, humankind's primordial myth-making, the origins of the universe, and in the dilapidated tenement blocks of an apocalyptic Bucharest during the years of communist dictatorship.

New Directions

Cartarescu brings together twenty short stories that he wrote for ELLE magazine. The protagonist of every story is female, but they are not individual portraits of women - it is a group portrait of womanhood. The implied question to which the title 'Why We Love Women' introduces a series of narrative answers is not Why do you love women but Why do we love women The we refers not to men in general but to the multiple biographical selves and literary personae of Mircea Cartarescu, spanning early childhood, youth and manhood in the closed world of communist Romania and mature adulthood and middle age in a post-communist world of free travel and encounters between cultures (the book s settings include San Francisco, Ireland, Amsterdam, Turin, Paris and Krakow). The women of the title are real, imaginary, fictional, fictionalised, literary, intertextual, fantastical, oneiric, ideal, historical, contemporary, tragic, burlesque, mysterious, ordinary, strange, familiar, exotic, homely, perfect, flawed, ethereal, mundane, sacred and profane, each uniquely individual and at the same time universal in her beauty. Even when at their most (seemingly) biographical, the stories and articles of 'Why We Love Women' are self-consciously literary, intertextual and self-reflexive. In the first story, the epiphany of ineffable female beauty triggered by the young African woman on the subway from Berkeley to San Francisco is framed and introduced in terms of what J. D. Salinger calls in 'The Laughing Man' unclassifiably great beauty at first sight . Cartarescu's literary influences are modern and American; his reference point for the revelation of absolute, ineffable female beauty is not Dante's Beatrice but Salinger's Mary Hudson. But the woman herself seems to transcend all times and cultures: she is African and ancient Egyptian, wearing an Indian sari, her anklet inscribed in Arabic, and the snaking threads of her Walkman earphones are like an artefact from the dawn of time

Why We Love Women

Short Stories & Anthologies

University Of Plymouth Press

Die Flügel

Zsolnay-Verlag

SOLENOIDE

Il Saggiatore

De ce iubim femeile

Humanitas

Umorul, satiricul si grotescul au fost dintotdeauna, in volumele sale de versuri, in Levantul si-n Orbitor, in Enciclopedia zmeilor si-n De ce iubim femeile, a doua coarda la arcul lui Mircea Cartarescu, alaturi de cea onirica si vizionara. In Frumoasele straine ele sunt coarda dintai. Putine carti din literatura romana de azi ii pot sta alaturi ca naturalete a povestirii si ca ubicuitate a comicului, intins pe toate registrele, de la zambetul discret la rasul cu lacrimi.Cele trei povestiri unite de aceeasi voce narativa, destinsa si fireasca, sunt filme cu camera in mana, fara nici o emfaza, mizand pe sinceritate si simplitate. Sunt road movies, mai scurte sau mai lungi, cu scriitori, artisti vizuali, politisti si criminali, studente si responsabili culturali, fantome si cineasti, risipiti intr-o lume mereu surprinzatoare.

FRUMOASELE STRAINE (Romanian Edition)

Editura Humanitas

Fata De La Marginea Vietii. Povestiri Alese (Romanian Edition)

HARDCOVER Edition. „Vreau sa scriu o dare de seama despre anomaliile mele. In viata mea obscura, in afara oricarei istorii, si pe care doar o istorie a literaturii ar ﬁ putut-o ﬁxa in taxinomiile ei, s-au intamplat lucruri care nu se intampla, nici in viata si nici in carti. As ﬁ putut scrie despre ele romane, dar romanul tulbura si ambiguizeaza sensul faptelor. As putea sa le pastrez pentru mine, cum le-am tinut pana acum, si sa ma gandesc la ele pana-mi crapa capul in ﬁecare seara in care stau ghemuit sub patura, pe cand afara ploaia izbeste furios in geamuri. Dar nu mai vreau sa le pastrez doar pentru mine. Vreau sa scriu un raport, desi nu stiu inca in ce fel si ce-am sa fac cu paginile astea. Nu stiu nici daca e timpul potrivit pentru asta. Inca n-am ajuns la nici o concluzie, la nici o coerenta, faptele mele sunt vagi fulgerari in netezimea banala a celei mai banale vieti, mici crevase, mici inadvertente. Formele astea informe, aluziile si insinuarile, accidentele de teren uneori insigniﬁante in sine, dar capatand, luate-mpreuna, ceva strain si obsedant, au nevoie de o forma ea insasi noua si neobisnuita ca sa poata ﬁ relatate. Nu roman si nici poem, caci ele nu sunt ﬁctiune (sau nu pe de-a-ntregul), nici studiu obiectiv, ﬁindca multe dintre faptele mele sunt singularitati ce nu se lasa reproduse nici macar in laboratoarele mintii mele.“ „Primul meu gand, odata-ncheiata lectura, a fost sa-mi scriu pe cartea de vizita «Eu am citit Solenoid». E un eveniment care-ti taie oarecum viata in doua: cine va citi cartea va inceta sa mai fie un cititor de rand.“ (Gabriel LIICEANU)

Solenoid (Romanian Edition)

De Ce Iubim Femeile (Romanian Edition)

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Books by Mircea Cărtărescu