This month we invite you to come out and help us welcome Mircea Cărtărescu as he journeys to North America to celebrate the launch of his remarkable novel Blinding, beautifully translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter.

• Twin Cities, Minnesota – October 12, 10:30 – 11:30am: Rain Taxi’s Twin Cities Book Festival
• Chicago – October 14, 7 – 9pm: at Chopin Theater
• Chicago – October 15, 4:30 – 6:30pm: at the Franke Institute (University of Chicago)
• Boston – October 16, 5 – 7pm: at Boston University
• Boston – October 17, 7 – 9:30pm: at MIT
• Boston – October 18, 5pm: at Harvard University
• New York – October 21, 7 – 9pm: at Columbia University
• Brooklyn –  October 22, 7 – 8pm: at Community Bookstore
• New York – October 23, 7 – 8:30pm: at McNally Jackson
• Toronto – October 24, 2pm: at Harbourfront Festival

Mircea Cărtărescu was born in 1956 in Bucharest, Romania. One of the foremost contemporary novelists and poets of Romania’s 1970s “Blue Jeans Generation,” his work was always strongly influenced by American writing in opposition to the official Communist ideology. Cărtărescu is the winner of the Berlin International Prize, the Romanian Writers’ Union Prize, the Romanian Academy’s Prize, the Swiss Leuk Spycher Preis, the Serbian Grand Prize for International Poetry, the 1992 nominee for the Prix Mèdicis, among other awards. His Nostalgia was published by New Directions. He currently lives in Bucharest.

Sean Cotter’s translations from the Romanian include Liliana Ursu’s Lightwall and Nichita Danilov’s Second-hand Souls. His essays, articles, and translations have appeared in Conjunctions, Two Lines, and Translation Review. His translation of Nichita Stănescu’s Wheel With a Single Spoke was the 2013 winner of the Best Translated Book Award in Poetry. He is Associate Professor of Literature and Literary Translation at the University of Texas at Dallas, Center for Translation Studies.

“Cărtărescu’s phantasmagorical world is similar to Dalí’s dreamscapes.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Gripping, impassioned, unexpected—
the qualities that the best in literature possesses.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“If George Lucas were a poet, this is how he would write.”
—New York Sun

“Reality has become promiscuous. Seldom have we seen Eros and Thanatos in such an obscene embrace…”
-Neue Zürcher Zeitung