The 2024 Dublin Literary Award, given annually to “a single work of international fiction written or a work of fiction translated into English,” went to Solenoid, a novel written by Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu and translated by Sean Cotter, the Irish Times reports.
The novel, published in the U.S. by Deep Vellum in 2022, tells the story of a 27-year-old teacher, disenchanted with the world and preoccupied with death. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus praised the book, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction, as “a masterwork of Kafkaesque strangeness, brilliantly conceived and written.”
In its citation, the jury for the award said, “By turns wildly inventive, philosophical and lyrical, with passages of great beauty, Solenoid is the work of a major European writer who is still relatively little known to English-language readers. Sean Cotter’s translation of the novel sets out to change that situation, capturing the lyrical precision of the original, thereby opening up Cărtărescu’s work to an entirely new readership.”
The award, Cărtărescu said, “shows an increase in my image as a writer in the English-speaking world after the publication of Solenoid, my breakthrough novel. I am grateful to the jury who chose my book from so many other wonderful ones.”
The Dublin Literary Award was first awarded in 1996. Past winners have included Nicola Barker for Wide Open and Edward P. Jones for The Known World.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
