num_pages: 361
description: A stunning translation of one of Romania's foremost authors. Mircea Cartarescu, born in 1956, is one of Romania's leading novelists and poets. This translation of his 1989 novel Nostalgia , writes Andrei Codrescu, "introduces to English 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 Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Milan Kundera, and Milorad Pavic, to mention just a few." Like most of his literary contemporaries of the avant-garde Eighties Generation, his major work has been translated into several European languages, with the notable exception, until now, of English.Readers opening the pages of Nostalgia should brace themselves for a verbal tidal wave of the imagination that will wash away previous ideas of what a novel is or ought to be. Although each of its five chapters is separate and stands alone, a thematic, even mesmeric harmony finds itself in children's games, the music of the spheres, humankind's primordial myth-making, the origins of the universe, and in the dilapidated tenement blocks of an apocalyptic Bucharest during the years of communist dictatorship.
language: English
title: Nostalgia
titlecomplete: Nostalgia
genres: Fiction, 20th Century, Romanian Literature, Classics, Contemporary, Romania, Literary Fiction, Literature, Short Stories, Novels
ratings_count: 3401
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Premio letterario Giuseppe Acerbi, awardedAt: 599644800000
name: The Romanian Academy Prize, awardedAt: 1357027200000
name: Premio La tormenta en un vaso
category: Mejor libro escrito en otras lenguas
publisher: New Directions