Two or three years ago I (Darran, the Manager) Tweeted that Nostalgia by Mircea Cărtărescu was the best work of fiction that I had read in about a decade (since 2666 by Roberto Bolano). I told Penguin that if he ever comes to the UK, I want to do an event with him. I'd say he is a writer on par with the great Europeans, i.e. Kafka, Schultz, Gogol, Hamsun. Now he is coming.

An enthralling, hallucinatory masterwork by one of Central Europe’s most celebrated novelists

‘We exist between the past and future like the vermiform body of a butterfly, in between its two wings’

Beneath the streets of communist Bucharest linger hidden passageways, lost to memory. Here, sprawling hospitals give way to travelling circuses and underground jazz clubs, and Cartarescu’s childhood, prehistory and visionary fever dreams are woven into the landscape of the city, haunted by secret police and zombie hoards.

Part visceral dream-memoir, part phantasmic pilgrimage, Mircea Cartarescu’s Blinding is one of the most widely heralded literary sensations in contemporary Romania, and a fascinating, kaleidoscopic journey into the past.

Mircea will be in conversation with me at bookhaus. Tickets cost £7 and include a glass of wine or a soft drink and £2 off the book. Presented by bookhaus.

Entry requirements: no age restrictions — Read more — Read less