© Hartwig Klappert
Mathias Énard [France]
Mathias Énard was born in Niort, France, in 1972. He began his academic studies in contemporary art and then studied Arabic and Persian in Tehran, Egypt, Venice, and Damascus, beginning in 1992. He subsequently spent two years teaching French in a village in Syria. Until 2010, he taught Arabic at the University of Barcelona.
His first novel, »La perfection du tir« (tr: The Perfection of the Shot), appeared in 2003 and tells the story of a sniper in a city torn by civil war. It was followed by »Remonter l’Orénoque« (tr: Back on the Orinoco) in 2005. In »Bréviaire des artificiers« (2007; tr: Breviary of a Blaster) he published a burlesque essay about terrorism. One year later, the publisher Actes Sud released Énard’s novel »Zone« (Eng. 2010) within the context of the »rentrée littéraire« (literary season, referring to a period between late August and November when many French books are published). While on a train trip from Milan to Rome, the protagonist, Francis Servain Mirković, recalls all the shadow players, agitators, terrorists, bankrollers, or middlemen, arms dealers, and war criminals on the run whom he met during his 15 years as an agent in his zone – first Algeria, and then gradually the entire Middle East. The French cultural journal »Télérama« wrote in a review: »Apart from a few commas, no punctuation: A novel in a single sentence, endless, inspired by rage, deadly delusion and possessed by an undreamt-of desire for resurrection.« In his 2010 book »Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d’éléphants« (Eng. »Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants«, 2019) Ènard considers what would have happened if, in the early 16th century, Michelangelo had actually fulfilled the Ottoman Sultan’s request to design a bridge between the Asian and European sides of Constantinople – the divide between Orient and Occident, a topic which remains highly relevant 500 years later. Énard’s next works were the novels »Rue des voleurs« (2012; Eng. »Street of Thieves«, 2014), in which he offers an oppressively convincing panoramic view of the Arab revolutions as well as of the European financial crisis and its repercussions, and »Boussole« (2015; Eng. »Compass«, 2017), in which he again addresses the (historical) relationship between the western world and the Middle East. This book won him the most prestigious French literature prize, the Prix Goncourt, as well as the Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding.
The author has also won numerous prizes for his other works, including the 2009 Prix du Livre Inter for »Zone«, the German-French literary award Candide (2008), and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s literature prize.
He lives in Barcelona.
Bibliography
La perfection du tir
Actes Sud
Arles, 2003
Remonter l’Orénoque
Actes Sud
Arles, 2005
Bréviaire des artificiers
Verticales
Paris, 2007
Zone
Actes Sud
Arles, 2008
Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d’éléphants
Actes Sud
Arles, 2010
L’alcool et la nostalgie
Inculte
Paris, 2011
Rue des voleurs
Actes Sud
Arles, 2012
Tout sera oublié
Actes Sud
Arles, 2013
Boussole
Actes Sud
Arles, 2015
ENGLISH
Zone
Open Letter Books
[translation: Charlotte Mandell]
Rochester, 2010
Street of Thieves
Open Letter Books
[translation: Charlotte Mandell]
Rochester, 2014
Compass
New Directions Publishing
New York, 2017
[translation: Charlotte Mandell]
Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants
New Directions
[translation: Charlotte Mandell]
New York, 2018
UKRAINIAN
Компас
Видавництво Старого Лева
[пер.: І. Славінська]
Львів, 2017
RUSSIAN
Вверх по Ориноко
Иностранка
[Перевод: М. Кожевниковa]
Москва, 2011
Компас
Азбука-Аттикус
[Переводчики: E. Морозова, И. Волевич]
Москва, 2018