Blinding: Volume 1

• Award-winning author with an international profile: Cărtărescu is a major European literary voice. He participated in the 2011 PEN World Voices Festival and has won the Romanian Writers' Union Prize, Romanian Academy's Prize, ASPRO Prize, Vilenica Prize; and was nominated for the Prix Medicis • Connected and energetic translator. Sean Cotter's essays, articles, and translations have appeared, among other placed in Conjunctions, Two Lines, The Comparatist, Translation Review, 22, and Romania literara, and he has lived in Romania as both a Fulbright-Hays scholar and a Peace Corps volunteer. He is a great promoter of his work and will promote it at speaking engagements and academic conferences. • Package. All Archipelago Books are printed on high quality, acid-free paper, feature signature sewn binding, and each is uniquely designed with eye-catching art More praise: "[Mircea Cărtărescu is] 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 Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Milan Kundera, and Milorad Pavic, to mention just a few." --Andrei Codrescu "A wonderful labyrinth of language and color." --Peter Constantine, PEN Translation Prize-winning translator of Thomas Mann, Sophocles, and Dostoevsky "Cartarescu is taking Europe by storm, garnering prize after prize in France, Italy, Germany..." --American Review "Unbridled imagination pairs with a richly atmospheric use of language, blending precision and poetry. Rarely has such dazzling beauty emerged from the crumbling edifice of communism." --Der Stern "His novel is nothing less than a cathedral of imagination and erudition ... This masterwork of mannerism is guaranteed to catapult Mircea Cartarescu to the highest echelons of European literature." --Neue Zürcher Zeitung "Cartarescu has the imagination of a prodigious child and the narrative virtuosity of an old master." --Der Spiegel "The apocalypse of a sepulchral, long-lost world is described in exuberant language. The author's metaphors and symbolism never once strike the wrong chord, and he shows commendable assurance in navigating the complexities of what at times amount to a dozen narrative strands - the reader is kept spellbound from the first page to the last. This writing sings like literature long unsung." --Falter