The fact that she is the daughter of the mathematician George Boole, he of Boolean logic, is also key, as our narrator is keen on maths and we get a fairly detailed biography of Boole. We will later get Voynich’s detailed story. Interestingly, the book that makes the most impression on him is Ethel Voynich‘s The Gadfly, published in English in 1897 and in Romanian in 1909. Our hero grows up in Bucharest spending his time reading, when not at school, while his parents watch TV. However, while this book certainly has some of those similarities, there are key differences. However, as in his other books he does, at one point, go off on a rant about poverty and corruption in Romania. He is not happy with the current situation in Romania though not, on the whole, very actively opposed to it, either. He will later say that the original architect of the city had the brilliant idea of building a city which was already in ruins, and that Bucharest is not a city but a state of mind, a deep sigh, a pathetic and useless scream and also the saddest city on the surface of the Earth but, at the same, the only true city. He has a love/hate relationship with Bucharest, though he wanders around it and knows it well. He is an only child and therefore has no siblings (though he did have a twin who died very young) or, apart from his parents, only the occasional other relative. We follow a solitary writer, presumably based on Cărtărescu himself.

Home » Romania » Mircea Cărtărescu » Solenoid Mircea Cărtărescu: SolenoidĬărtărescu’s novels often have a similar approach.

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