Mathias Énard

Mathias Énard is a French novelist born in 1972 in Niort. He studied Persian and Arabic and has spent extended periods living in the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Lebanon. He currently teaches Arabic at the University of Barcelona, and his deep engagement with Arab and Persian culture permeates his fiction. Énard is best known for Zone (2008), a novel written in a single sentence spanning 500 pages, and Boussole (Compass, 2015), his Prix Goncourt-winning meditation on the relationship between European and Oriental cultures through the sleepless night of a Viennese musicologist. Boussole earned Énard the Prix Goncourt in 2015 and was subsequently translated into English by Charlotte Mandell, receiving wide international acclaim. The novel is an erudite, lyrical exploration of Orientalism, love, and cultural entanglement. Énard is considered one of the most ambitious and intellectually adventurous writers in contemporary French literature. His work consistently engages with questions of cultural borders, memory, and the deep history of exchange between East and West.