RCI London is celebrating the release of Mircea Cărtărescu’s Nostalgia, in the universally admired Penguin Modern Classics series, with a programme of events developed in partnership with the prestigious publishing house. Widely considered to be the pre-eminent literary voice emerging from post-communist Romania, winner of laurels including the Thomas Mann Prize, the Prix Formentor and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, Mircea Cărtărescu is the creator of mesmerising worlds, supported by his unrivalled powers of observation and association.
The printing for the first time in Britain of this “fractalic and holographic novel”, masterfully translated into English by Julian Semilian, will only add to the reputation of an author who has amassed a cult following not only in his country but across Europe and beyond.
Photo exhibition: The Solipsist’s Archive
“I envision dreams, memories, and reality like a Möbius strip whose sides are indistinguishable from one another.”
On 1st of June, Mircea Cărtărescu’s birthday, we are falling victims of an old illusion. With an elegant sleight of hand, the author draws out pictures from his personal archives, revealing moments going all the way back to his early childhood and adolescence, essential instances from his family life merging with his grand literary life. A chronicle of shameless youthfulness.
When: 1 June 2021, 19.00.
Discussion: The 1980s’ Generation and the Republic of Literature
The cultural milieu in which Nostalgia was written, in the most oppressive years of Ceaușescu’s regime, is revealed in a a dense and fascinating discussion mapping the prominent literary generation of the 80s. Three of its most distinguished representatives – Mircea Cărtărescu, Magda Cârneci and Matei Vișniec – meet cultural journalist Miriam Balanescu.
„My literary friends felt the same way: we didn’t live in Romania, we lived in Hesse’s Castalia, in the republic of literature. We had an underground existence, we lived together and visited each other, we read each other’s texts and lent each other books.”
When: 7 June 2021, 19.00.
Mircea Cărtărescu in conversation with Boyd Tonkin
As children, both Cărtărescu and Tonkin were avid readers at their local libraries and would have certainly started a friendship in a universe governed by a more merciful geography.
The author of “100 Best Novels in Translation” and former chair of the Man Booker International Prize meets the internationally acclaimed Romanian writer to talk about Nostalgia, the cosmopolitan tradition of the novel and all the important things boys who love books can think about.
When: 10 June 2021, 19.00.
Photo Exhibition: Bucharest, as a foreign language
It has always been Mircea Cărtărescu’s ambition to make Bucharest his own literary property and the energies of the capital pulsate in the fibre of Nostalgia. Combining selected passages from the novel with the thought provoking 1980s art photography of Andrei Pandele, this crash course will teach you the basic vocabulary of an enigmatic city.
”Bucharest is like the Basque language: you can learn it only from your mother (…) I see myself in it like in a huge, convex mirror.”
When: 11 June 2021, 19.00.
Screening: The Restlessness of Time / Neliniștea timpului
A short film by Ștefan Constantinescu, reading by Mircea Cărtărescu and animation by Bogdan Marcu. In Romanian with English subtitles | 2007 | 7 mins.
When: 11 June 2021, 19.30.
All events will be in English and will be broadcasted on RCI London’s Facebook page, YouTube channel and website. You do not need a Facebook account to watch – FB is simply a platform.
