Examines translations by canonical Romanian writers Lucian Blaga, Constantin Noica, and Emil Cioran, arguing that that their works reveal a new, "minor" mode of national identity. Studies of the Romanian national imagination have historically focused on the formation of modern Romania after World War I, Romania's fascist movement and alliance with Germany during World War II, or the remobilization of nationalist discourse in the 1970s and 1980s -- moments in which Romanian intellectuals imagine their nation assuming or working toward major cultural status. Literary Translation and the Idea of a Minor Romania examines translations by canonical Romanian writers Lucian Blaga, Constantin Noica, and Emil Cioran following the imposition of Communist rule, arguing that their works reveal a new, "minor" mode of national identity based on the model of the translator. The "minor" emphasizes intercultural exchange, adaptation, and ironic distance in the ways a nation thinks of itself. Drawing on theorists as diverse as Benedict Anderson, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Francoise Lionnet, Sean Cotter proposes that this multilingual and multicultural version of the nation is better suited than older models to understanding a globalized world, one in which translation plays an indispensable role.. Sean Cotter is associate professor of literature and literary translation at the University of Texas at Dallas.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by the New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, The Financial Times, Words Without Borders A highly-acclaimed master work of fiction from Cărtărescu, author of Blinding: an existence (and eventually a cosmos) created by forking paths. Based on Cărtărescu's own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist's life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. One character asks another: when you rush into the burning building, will you save the newborn or the artwork? On a broad scale, the novel’s investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art. The novel is grounded in the reality of late 1970s/early 1980s Communist Romania, including long lines for groceries, the absurdities of the education system, and the misery of family life. The text includes sequences in a tuberculosis sanatorium, an encounter with an anti-death protest movement, a society of dream investigators, and an extended visit to the miniscule world of dust mites living on a microscope slide. Combining fiction with autobiography and history— the scientists Nicolae Tesla and George Boole, for example, appear alongside the Voynich manuscript—Solenoid ruminates on the exchanges possible between the alternate dimensions of life and art, as various, monstrous dimensions erupt within the Communist present.

In this modern classic of global feminist literature, the only novel by one of Romania's most heralded poets, styled as a long letter addressed to the man she is ready to leave, a woman meanders through a cosmic retelling of her life from childhood to adulthood with visionary language and visceral detail. Like a contemporary Scheherazade, she spins captivating tales that create space in the cosmos for the female experience. Through a dreamlike thread of strange images and passing characters from the small incidents of their lives together to the intimate narrative of her relationship to womanhood, her stories invite the reader into a fantastical vision of love, loss, and femininity.

Poetry. Translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter. Nichita Danilov (b. 1952) places himself in the tradition of mystics such as Meister Eckhart, St, John of the Cross, and Pseudo-Dionysius. Combining the spiritual heritage of his native Romania with a surrealist poetics, his writing is playful, ironic, and language-centered, engaging in games of a metaphysical depth. In this selection of his poetry (presented bilingually) and prose, Danilov describes a world full of caprice in a voice coming from the darkness of a purgatory where the divine appears in bizarre images.