01738nam a22001697a 450000500170000000800410001702000180005802801420007608200160021810000240023424500480025852011830030665000190148965000270150865000100153570000230154520241204154112.0241204b        |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d  a9781646052028  a: International Book Distrubutorsb: Flat No. 17, Prakash Apartment, 4405/2,5, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi.c: 120961d: 21/11/2024  a859.334 CAR  aCartarescu, Mircea.  aSolenoidb: An Essay.c/ Mircea Cartarescu.  aBased on Cartarescu's own experience as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist's life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. The novel is grounded in the reality of Romania in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including frightening health care, the absurdities of the education system, and the misery of family life, while on a broad scale Solenoid's investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines attempt to reconcile the realms of life and art. The text includes sequences in a tuberculosis preventorium, encounters with an anti-death protest movement, a society of dream investigators, and an extended visit to the miniscule world of dust mites living on a microscope slide. One character asks another: When you rush into the burning building, will you save the newborn or the artwork?

Combining fiction with autobiography and history—Nikola Tesla and Charles Hinton, for example, appear alongside the Voynich manuscript—Solenoid searches for escape routes through the alternate dimensions of life and art, as various monstrous realities erupt within the present.  aDiarist's life  aPhilosophical account   aEssay  aMircea Cartarescu