Part visceral dream-memoir, part fictive journey through a hallucinatory Bucharest, Mircea Cărtărescu's Blinding was one of the most widely heralded literary sensations in contemporary Romania, and a bestseller from the day of its release. Riddled with hidden passageways, mesmerizing tapestries, and whispering butterflies, Blinding takes us on a mystical trip into the protagonist's childhood, his memories of hospitalization as a teenager, the prehistory of his family, a traveling circus, Secret police, zombie armies, American fighter pilots, the underground jazz scene of New Orleans, and the installation of the communist regime. This kaleidoscopic world is both eerily familiar and profoundly new. Readers of Blinding will emerge from this strange pilgrimage shaken, and entirely transformed.From the Trade Paperback edition. Jorge Luis Borges, Bruno Schulz, Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Milan Kundera, and Milorad Pavic, to mention just a few." --Andrei Codrescu"A wonderful labyrinth of language and color." --Peter Constantine, PEN Translation Prize-winning translator of Thomas Mann, Sophocles, and Dostoevsky"Cartarescu is taking Europe by storm, garnering prize after prize in France, Italy, Germany..." --American Review"Unbridled imagination pairs with a richly atmospheric use of language, blending precision and poetry. Rarely has such dazzling beauty emerged from the crumbling edifice of communism." --Der Stern"His novel is nothing less than a cathedral of imagination and erudition ... This masterwork of mannerism is guaranteed to catapult Mircea Cartarescu to the highest echelons of European literature." --Neue Zürcher Zeitung"Cartarescu has the imagination of a prodigious child and the narrative virtuosity of an old master." --Der Spiegel"The apocalypse of a sepulchral, long-lost world is described in exuberant language. The author's metaphors and symbolism never once strike the wrong chord, and he shows commendable assurance in navigating the complexities of what at times amount to a dozen narrative strands - the reader is kept spellbound from the first page to the last. This writing sings like literature long unsung." --Falter