Blinding: The Left Wing

Reviews / Votes

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 * 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 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 * In this wise, stunning novel, everything is divided: the narrator; the history through which that narrator lives; the very city of Bucharest. Unlike many authors who play at the edges of what makes fiction fictive or what can be said to constitute reality, Cartarescu manages to keep his profundity engaging, his irony humorous, his wit acid but not cruel -- Andrew Solomon Fluidly translated by Sean Cotter... the book has a cinematic quality that we don't so much read as drift through - as in an amusement park ride. What fantastic notion, or iteration of metamorphosing insect will pop out and regale us next? If you're game for a mystical mind-bend, give Blinding a go * The Los Angeles Review *