Compass: A Novel

Mathias Énard’s immersive, nocturnal, musical journey is a declaration of admiration, a hand reaching out, a bridge of words between West & East. Translated by Charlotte Mandell.As night falls over Vienna, Franz Ritter, an insomniac musicologist, spends a restless night drifting between dreams & memories. He revisits his life: his travels to Istanbul, Aleppo, Damascus & Tehran; the various writers, artists, musicians, academics & explorers who populate this vast dreamscape. At the centre of these memories is an elusive, unrequited love – Sarah, a fiercely intelligent French scholar caught in the perpetual tension between Europe & the Middle East."With divisive rhetoric spouting these days from every direction, Mathias Énard’s magnificent Compass has appeared on our shores at precisely the right time... The genius of Énard’s composition lies in the seemingly random organization of Ritter’s thoughts ... Énard has written a masterful novel that speaks to our current, confusing moment in history by highlighting the manifold, vital contributions of Islamic & other Middle Eastern cultures to the European canon." — Andrew Ervin, The Washington Post°°° Mathias Énard studied & is a translator of Persian & Arabic. He has spent long periods in the Middle East. He has won several awards for Zone, including the Prix du Livre Inter & the Prix Décembre, & won the Liste Goncourt/Le Choix de l’Orient, the Prix littéraire de la Porte Dorée, & the Prix du Roman-News for Street of Thieves. He won the 2015 Prix Goncourt for Compass. Winner of the 2015 Prix Goncourt, an astounding novel that bridges Europe and the Islamic world Winner of the Prix Goncourt (France), the Leipzig Prize (Germany), Premio Von Rezzori (Italy), shortlisted for the 2017 International Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 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. With exhilarating prose and sweeping erudition, Mathias Énard pulls astonishing elements from disparate sources—nineteenth-century composers and esoteric orientalists, Balzac and Agatha Christie—and binds them together in a most magical way. 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. -- Résumé de l'éditeur "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