Compass

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 Persian & Arabic & has spent long periods in the Middle East. He has won several awards for Zone, including the Prix du Livre Inter and 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.