Mathias Énard, trans. from the French by Charlotte Mandell, Open Letter (Univ. of Nebraska, dist.), $16.95 trade paper (517p) ISBN 978-1-934824-26-9 Homeric in its scope and grandeur, remarkable in ...

Set between the 16th and 22nd centuries, The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild is a work of political comedy, fixated on class, climate, food, wine, and the afterlife. Set between the 16th and ...

Mathias Enard’s first novel published in English, “Zone” (2010), takes the form of a 500-page-long sentence, the internal monologue of a French Croatian spy on a train to the Vatican to sell a trove ...

History blinks, sometimes at a big moment, sometimes at a small one. The loss is imperceptible centuries later, but in those forgotten moments, there can be experiences that echo through history.

Imagine if you told someone you were going to write an entire book -- 150,000 words -- that would be one single sentence. That’s what Mathias Énard did in “Zone,” which, despite its avant-garde form, ...

Discussed in this essay: The Deserters, by Mathias Énard. Translated by Charlotte Mandell. New Directions. 192 pages. $16.95. If The Deserters poses this question in a dramatic way, the relationship ...

Compass. By Mathias Enard. Translated by Charlotte Mandell. New Directions; 464 pages $26.95. Fitzcarraldo Editions; £14.99. “THE East is a career,” wrote Disraeli in his novel “Tancred”. Lately, the ...

Les jurés ont parlé. A 13h ce mardi, chez Drouant, Didier Decoin, secrétaire général de l'académie Goncourt, a annoncé le lauréat. C’est Mathias Enard pour « Boussole » (Actes Sud) qui remporte cette ...