Mircea Cărtărescu was born in Romania in 1956. Holding a doctorate in literature, he teaches Romanian literature at the University of Bucharest. Poet, novelist, literary critic, and journalist, he is a member of the Union of Romanian Writers as well as the European Cultural Parliament. He has published nearly 30 books, and his work has been translated into 20 languages. Compared to Kafka, Borges, and Kundera, he has received dozens of major literary awards, including the prestigious Thomas Mann Prize (Germany) and Formentor de las Letras (Spain). In 2024, he published Théodoros [Theodoros], translated from Romanian by Laure Hinckel (Noir sur blanc, 2024). His masterpiece, L’Aile gauche [The Left Wing], will be reissued in a new translation by Laure Hinckel at Denoël in October 2025. This is the first volume of his brilliant fantasmagorical trilogy Binding, unavailable for over ten years.