Blinding: The Left Wing

Visionary, surreal, exhilarating… Almost as if David Lynch had dramatised the prophetic books of William Blake – Boyd Tonkin * Financial Times *Nobody better probes the disconcerting vulnerability of our existence, always, ultimately, alone; looking on a bewildering world that refuses to console us, and no writer does it with such creative intelligence. The next two volumes can’t arrive soon enough * Irish Times *This is writing of overwhelming accomplishment… Reading Blinding is like sinking into the humus of a mind, a vast, tangled network of memory and fantasy – Chris Power * Observer *Vivid, sumptuous… a rich, disturbing exploration of our sense of time * TLS *Mircea Cartarescu’s writing is dreamlike in the truest sense… It is an effluence – prose at times decadently grim and at others shimmering and ethereal – that this reader, like a dog, couldn’t help but lap up * ArtReview *A wild history of Bucharest in the 20th century… Blinding reawakens the perceptual imagination and gifts us new insight * Literary Review *Cartarescu is no longer writing novels. He is officiating a cult * TLS *One of the greatest literary adventurers in contemporary literature * El Pais *Gripping, impassioned, unexpected–the qualities that the best in literature possesses * Los Angeles Times Book Review *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

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, including the trilogy Blinding, Solenoid and Nostalgia have been translated into over twenty languages. Solenoid was longlisted for the International Booker Prize and he has received many awards, including most recently the Dublin Literary Award, the Thomas Mann Prize and the Prix Formentor.

Sean Cotter (Translator)

Sean Cotter is Professor of Literature and Translation Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. He has received the Best Translated Book Award for Poetry and multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.