Reading Mircea Cartarescu

Orbitor, the Romanian title of Mircea Cartarescu’s epic novelistic trilogy of which two volumes already exist, plays with the ambiguity of the word “brilliant” and refers to the wide-reaching roots of the multifaceted world-encompassing occurrences into which the novels’ heroes and readers fall. In one of its numerous narrative strings, an extraordinary family story is told, which expands in the course of the plot to the societal level. It also points to what is Romanian in the glittering area of the world between orient and occident more infamously known as the Balkans, which culturally has many surprises to offer.

Cartarescu and his translator Gerhardt Csejka will perform one chapter from the first volume of this novelistic work, whose German translation will appear in 2007 through Zsolnay Verlag in Vienna.

Mircea Cartarescu (*1956 in Bucharest), studied literature at the University of Bucharest. He is a professor at the University of Bucharest, an essayist, a literary critic and one of Romania’s leading contemporary authors. His works have been translated into many languages and have won numerous international awards. Cartarescu has been a guest of the Akademie since April 2006.

A cooperation with the Literaturhaus Stuttgart

Admission free