Mircea Cărtărescu's novel Solenoid, translated into English by Sean Cotter, is the winner of this year's Dublin Literary Award.

The novel, which combines fiction with autobiography and history, is grounded in the reality of late 1970s - early 1980s Communist Romania.

"By turns wildly inventive, philosophical, and lyrical, with passages of great beauty, Solenoid is the work of a major European writer who is still relatively little known to English-language readers. Sean Cotter's translation of the novel sets out to change that situation, capturing the lyrical precision of the original, thereby opening up Cărtărescu's work to an entirely new readership," the jury commented.

The novel, published in English by Deep Vellum Publishing, was named the fiction book of the year in the United States by the Los Angeles Times last year.

Cărtărescu is the first Romanian author to win the Dublin Literary Award, and Solenoid was the only translated work to make it on the shortlist this year.

Orhan Pamuk, Michel Houellebecq, Javier Marías, Colm Tóibín, Herta Müller, and Jim Crace are among the previous winners of the accolade. 

Published in Romanian in 2015 by Humanitas Publishing House, Solenoid has been translated into Spanish, Catalan, Swedish, French, German, Slovak, Bulgarian, Croatian, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, and Hungarian. 

Solenoid was nominated for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award by the Octavian Goga Cluj County Library.

Presented annually, the award is worth EUR 100,000 for a single work of international fiction written or a work of fiction translated into English. If the winning book is in English translation, the author receives EUR 75,000 and the translator, EUR 25,000.

Cărtărescu is one of the most translated and awarded Romanian authors. A lot of his work is available in English, French, Spanish or German and can be read overall in more than 20 languages.

In 2018, he received the Thomas Mann Prize, jointly awarded by the Hanseatic City of Lübeck and the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, and the Prix Formentor (Premio Formentor de las Letras). In 2016, he won the Premio Gregor von Rezzori for best foreign fiction work translated in Italy at the Festival degli Scrittori organized in Florence. He received the award for the second volume of the trilogy Orbitor (Blinding). In 2015, he received two international literary distinctions: the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in recognition of his entire work and the Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding for his trilogy Blinding.

In 2014, he received the Euskadi de Plata award in San Sebastian, and the Spanish Tormenta en un vaso award, granted to works presented the previous year at the Madrid Book Fair (Feria del Libro de Madrid). In 2013, Cărtărescu received two other awards: the Grand Award of the Novi Sad International Poetry Festival and the Swiss Spycher — Literaturpreis Leuk award. In 2012, he was awarded the Haus der Kulturen der Welt International Literature award in Berlin, while a year earlier, in 2011, he received the Vileniča International Award for Literature. In 2005, he received the Italian literary award Giuseppe Acerbi.

In 2022, he was granted the FIL Literary Award in Romance Languages, awarded during the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL).

(Photo: George Calin/ Inquam Photos)

simona@romania-insider.com