This French author crafts novels often exploring Arabic themes, a passion ignited by his university studies in Arabic and Persian. His distinctive style is marked by ambitious scope and deep dives into the human psyche, frequently employing fluid, internal monologues. His work is celebrated for intricately weaving personal reflection with broader historical contexts, creating immersive narratives that resonate with readers.
Brimming with Mathias Enard's characteristic wit and encyclopaedic brilliance, The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild is a riotous novel set in western France, where the edges between past and present are constantly dissolving against a Rabelaisian backdrop of excess.
A rich and vivid novel about Michelangelo in Constantinople from the 'mesmerizing' (NEW YORKER) and 'masterful' (WASHINGTON POST) author of COMPASS.
As night falls over Vienna, Franz Ritter, an insomniac musicologist, takes to his sickbed with an unspecified illness and spends a restless night drifting between dreams and memories, revisiting the important chapters of his life: his ongoing fascination with the Middle East and his numerous travels to Istanbul, Aleppo, Damascus, and Tehran, as well as the various writers, artists, musicians, academics, orientalists, and explorers who populate this vast dreamscape. At the center of these memories is his elusive, unrequited love, Sarah, a fiercely intelligent French scholar caught in the intricate tension between Europe and the Middle East"--Amazon.com
Part political thriller, part road-movie, part romance, the latest novel by Mathias Enard takes us from the violence of Tangier's streets to Barcelona's louche Raval quarter. Street of Thieves is an intense coming-of-age story that delves deep into the brutal realities of the immigrant experience.