Mathias Énard is the author of Compass (winner of the Prix
Goncourt, the Leipzig Prize, and the Premio von Rezzori, and
shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize), Tell Them
of Battles, Kings, and Elephants, Zone, and Street of Thieves.
A Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, Mandell has translated works by a
number of important French authors, including Proust, Flaubert,
Genet, Maupassant, and Blanchot.
"If all you have is a bridge, then everything begins to look like a
chasm; the incessant drive to overcome all differences has,
unsurprisingly, created more division. Énard’s radical suggestion
has been, instead, to think about who is being connected to whom,
and what is being bypassed along the way."
*Art in America*
"Énard packs a feast for the senses into this short book."
*Boyd Tonkin - Financial Times*
"The story of Il Maestro’s invitation from the sultan to design a
bridge over the Golden Horn is beautifully wrought in its
simplicity—credit must go to Charlotte Mandell’s translation—with a
perfectly paced narrative that reaches a dramatic
denouement...Enard’s taut prose carries the reader swiftly and
satisfyingly through chapters (which are more like fragments,
really) to the extent that one does not wish for the tale to
end. "
*Irish Times*
"Too interesting to pass up."
*Literary Hub*
"Any year Mathias Enard brings us new work is always worth
celebrating. He invites us to engage with subjects as intricate as
beauty, history and art, and always finds some way to make it still
feel vital, leaving you with a resounding sense of hope and
generosity. While Tell Them of Battles, Kings and
Elephants may at times feel like reading the most beautiful
poem as the world slowly degrades around you, it might also
convince you that art is invincible. An important idea to hold on
to, I think, as we wait for our political pantomimes to play out.
Charlotte Mandell translates and the book is a miracle."
*Guy Gunaratne - New Statesman*
"Énard weaves an imaginative and suspenseful tale of civilizations
and personalities clashing, of love, of being an artist in a
violent era."
*Juan Vidal - NPR*
"A historical novel of exquisite beauty."
*Publishers Weekly*
"Continues Énard’s deep, humanistic explorations of the historical
and ongoing connections between Europe and Asia, Islamdom and
Christendom."
*The Millions*
"Even as the tragedies of history are spoken, the listeners are
asleep. And yet, Énard remains optimistic, his novels a powerful
reminder that the possibility for connection remains."
*Isaac Zisman - The Millions*
"There is a lush materiality to Énard’s prose, thick and smooth, so
that following the artist’s expeditions through Ottoman opium dens
feels nearly as immersive as being in them."
*The New York Times*
"Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants (deftly
translated, like Énard’s three previous English releases, by
Charlotte Mandell) is a tale of bastard genius that might have
been, and a cautionary fable about the consequences of parochial
timidity."
*Julian Lucas - The New Yorker*
"In this charming little reverie of a book, inspiration springs
from our unguarded confrontations with the unfamiliar."
*Sam Sacks - The Wall Street Journal*
"Mathias Énard weaves tantalizing facts and fragments into the
tapestry of a slender historical novel."
*World Literature Today*
"All of Énard’s books share the hope of transposing prose into the
empyrean of pure sound, where words can never correspond to stable
meanings. He’s the composer of a discomposing age."
*Joshua Cohen - The New York Times Book Review*
"Énard fuses recollection and scholarly digression into a swirling,
hypnotic, stream-of-consciousness narration."
*Sam Sacks - The Wall Street Journal*
"No one else writes like Mathias Énard."
*Francine Prose*
"In his fiction, Énard is constructing an intricate, history-rich
vision of a persistently misunderstood part of the
world—mesmerizing."
*Jacob Silverman - The New Yorker*
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