Afgelopen donderdag won Solenoid van de Roemeense schrijver Mircea Cărtărescu de Dublin Literary Award 2024. De roman werd vertaald door Sean Cotter en de schrijver en vertaler mogen het prijzenbedrag van 100.000 euro verdelen. In Nederland is het boek Solenoïde uitgegeven door De Bezige Bij (en vertaald door Jan Willem Bos). Marijke Schermer stond met Breakwater nog op de longlist. Gerbrand Bakker blijft de enige Nederlander die de prijs ooit heeft gewonnen (toen nog onder de naam International Impac Dublin Award). In 2010 won hij met de vertaling van Boven is het stil (The twin).

De jury zei bij de presentatie van de shortlist over Solenoid:

‘we can imagine (it not fully grasp) a world that has, in comparison to our own, an extra dimension.” In some respects, this is the world of Solenoid. The city of Bucharest in which the narrator is a teacher and failed writer is a place in which what appears to be an abandoned factory contains unexpected caverns, tunnels and a gallery of enormous parasites, where an apparently ordinary, run-down house is built upon an electrical device that causes people lying in bed to float. 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.

‘An anti-novel that for all intents and purposes should not exist but still does despite itself, thanks to the overpowering talents of the author and the translator.’ — Anton Hur, 2024 Dublin Literary Award Judge

Hierbij de ceremonie van afgelopen donderdag.