Romanian · b. 1956
Mircea Cărtărescu is Romania's most celebrated living author. His Blinding trilogy—"Orbitor"—took two decades to complete, a phantasmagoric autobiography blending Bucharest under Ceaușescu with dreams, memory, and hallucination. "Solenoid" (2024) continues the exploration: a failed poet teaching in a Bucharest school discovers the city's hidden dimensions. Cărtărescu writes about consciousness and reality with Proustian ambition and surrealist freedom.