Writer Mircea Cărtărescu, UB emeritus professor, winner of the Dublin Literary Award for his novel “Solenoid”. The distinction, previously awarded to writers such as Orhan Pamuk and Michel Houllebeq

Writer Mircea Cărtărescu, emeritus professor of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest, was designated the winner of the Dublin Literary Award for his novel Solenoid. The award gala took place Thursday, May 23^rd 2024, in the capital of Ireland.

The prize was given, over the years, to writers such as Orhan Pamuk, Javier Marias and Michel Houllebeq, and recognized the value of one of the most radical novels written in the last few years.

Mircea Cărtărescu  – I am, ultimately, a cărtărescologist, the only one in the world

Visibly touched, the winner addressed several words of gratitude on the scene of the festival, including for the institution that proposed him for the prestigious prize, the “Octavian Goga” Library in Cluj-Napoca. At the same time, the writer described his novel as being premonitory, underlining the fact that, after its publication, several tragedies of the contemporary world started, such as the war in Ukraine, the conflict in the Gaza Strip or the confusion of human values in the world of social networks.

It is an extraordinary honor to receive a great literary award from Dublin, a city that has a place on the mental map of each writer in the world, because each of us owes something to Swift, to Yeats, to Joyce and to many other great names of Irish literature. (…) I also address thanks to my fellows from the “Octavian Goga” Library in Cluj-Napoca who have nominated me for the prize. I thank my editor, Will Evans, director of Deep Vellum, the editor of “Solenoid”, and to Sean Cotter, the translator of the novel. Not lastly, I thank the members of the jury who have chosen “Solenoid” from all the valuable texts of this year’s competition. (…) It is difficult to resume 40 years of life spent in literature. For me, literature was and will be a prolonged interior journal, a unceasing dialogue with myself. I have never written literature just to publish books. (… ) I am, ultimately, a cărtărescologist, the only one in the world. I have spent my life studying the anatomy, physiology, ethology, ethics, esthetics, and metaphysics of a single human being. I have done this, however, in the hope that the small universe inside my skull could reflect, in a glimpse, the entire humanity, with its tragedies and sufferance, with its triumphs and disasters, with its insanity and wisdom, with its heroes and misfortunes.

Los Angeles Times: The novel Solenoid, best fiction

Published in 2015, the novel Solenoid has 672 pages.

In 2023, on International Handwriting Day, Mircea Cărtărescu published the last written pages of novels Blinding. The left wing and Solenoid, manuscripts very well received by the public.

In April 2023, the novel Solenoid was designated as Best Fiction by Los Angeles Times in the 2023 edition of the prizes which it has been offering for the last 43 years.

I still cannot believe that “Solenoid” won this prize, one of the most important in the United States of America, wrote Cărtărescu on a social network, following the festivity in the US.

Emeritus professor Mircea Cărtărescu, winner of several international literary awards

Poet, proser, essayist, literary critic and publicist, emeritus professor Mircea Cărtărescu published numerous volumes starting 1980, which were translated in over 20 languages.

He graduated the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest, where, in 1999, he received his PhD in Philology with a paper on Romanian Postmodernism, coordinated by professor Paul Cornea. His PhD thesis was published the same year at Humanitas Press, being afterwards re-edited.

After finishing his PhD studies, Mircea Cărtărescu went through all the stages of a university career, serving as a tutor, assistant, lecturer, associated professor and professor within the Department of Literary Studies of the UB Faculty of Letters.

In 2021, within the 5^th edition of the Senate Awards Gala organized by the University of Bucharest, professor Cărtărescu was designated as “Emeritus Professor of the Year”.

The author received, among others, the Vileniča International Prize for Literature (2011, Lokev, Slovenia), “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” International Literature Award (2012, Berlin, Germany), “Spycher – Literaturpreis Leuk” Literature Award  (2013, Switzerland), The Great Prize of the Novi Sad International Poetry Festival (2013, Novi Sad, Serbia), the “Tormenta en un vaso” Award (2014, Spain), “Euskadi de Plata” Award (2014, San Sebastián, Spain), Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding (2015, Leipzig, Germany), The Austrian State Prize for European Literature (2015, Austria), “Leteo” Prize (2017, Spain), and “Formentor de las Letras” Award (2018, Palma de Mallorca, Spain).

In 2021, Mircea Cărtărescu won the Prozart Award in North Macedonia. In 2022, he was the winner of the FIL Award of Romanic Languages Literature of the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico.

In May 2024, writer Mircea Cărtărescu was designated the winner of the Mondello International Literary Award in Italy, previously granted to Milan Kundera, Thomas Bernhard, JM Coetzee, Don DeLillo, Doris Lessing and Marilynne Robinson.

More recently, in 2024, Mircea Cărtărescu received the Ceppo Award for fiction for his novel Melancolia.

His books received awards from the Romanian Academy, Union of Writers in Romania and the Republic of Moldova, the Ministry of Culture, ASPRO, the Association of Writers in Bucharest, the Association of Editors in Romania. The novel Nostalgia, received, in 2005, the Giuseppe Acerbi Literary prize at Goffredo Castle, Italy.

Writer Mircea Cărtărescu has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize for Literature, being proposed twice by the Union of Writers in Romania.