Mircea Cărtărescu, Orbitor, vol. 1 [Glaring]

Letitia Guran (Longwood College)

Ed. by Cristina Sandru, The Literary Encyclopedia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.8.4: Romanian Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Calin Andrei Mihailescu (University of Western Ontario)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1996

Places

Romania (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

For those unfamiliar to Cărtărescu’s prose, Orbitor can be an overwhelming experience. Its dense, profound, visionary style may startle the reader not prepared for a text that is both “realist and dream-like, descriptive and hallucinatory, a Proustian novel of remembering and reclaiming things past, […] a meta-narrative of reading, […] and simultaneously an archaeology and anatomy of being” (Manolescu, back cover, Orbitor. Aripa stîngă). For those familiar with the author’s previous texts, Orbitor may appear like a re-writing, which illuminates through its grander scale and design, but also though re-contextualized repetition of earlier themes, imagery, and references. As the title, <…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2277 words

Citation: Guran, Letitia. "Orbitor, vol. 1". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 June 2010 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=30165, accessed 19 April 2024.]

Save this article