Paperback
Dreamlike Bucharest journey through memory, secrets, and hallucinatory past.
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  • Paperback

    432 pages

  • Release Date

    28 January 2027

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Summary

‘Visionary… almost as if David Lynch had dramatised the prophetic books of William Blake’ - Boyd Tonkin, Financial Times

‘This is writing of overwhelming accomplishment’ - Chris Power, Observer

An enthralling, hallucinatory masterwork by one of Central Europe’s most celebrated novelists

‘We exist between the past and future like the vermiform body of a butterfly, in between its two wings’

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780241754900
ISBN-10:0241754909
Author:Mircea Cartarescu, Sean Cotter
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint:Penguin Classics
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:432
Release Date:28 January 2027
Weight:302g
Dimensions:27mm x 129mm x 198mm
Series:Penguin International Writers
A-Format
B-Format
Blinding: The Left Wing by Mircea Cartarescu - ISBN: 9780241754900
129 × 198 mm
C-Format
A4
mm / in
What They're Saying

Critics Review

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

About The Author

Mircea Cartarescu

Mircea Cărtărescu (Author)

Mircea Cărtărescu (b. 1956) is Romania’s most celebrated writer. His books, including Theodoros, Solenoid, the trilogy Blinding, and Nostalgia have been translated into over twenty languages. Solenoid was longlisted for the International Booker Prize, and he has received many awards, including the Dublin Literary Award and the Thomas Mann Prize.

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.

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