Mathias Énard

Mathias Énard (born January 11, 1972) is a French writer and translator. He is the recipient of several literary awards, including the Prix Goncourt in 2015, for his novel Compass. Since 2020, he has produced and hosted a literary program on France Culture.

Early life Énard was raised in Poitou by “a special ed teacher from Nice and a Basque speech therapist.” After studying at the École du Louvre, he continued his studies in Arabic and Persian at INALCO , where he wrote his thesis on “post-war Arabic and Persian poetry and its relationship with European literature.”

Énard’s first novel, La Perfection du tir,

From 2005 to 2006, Énard was a resident at the French Academy in Rome.

Actes Sud published his novel Zone in 2008. It consists primarily of a single long sentence over its five hundred pages, with exceptions for three chapters, which are excerpts from a book the narrator is reading . It was awarded many prizes, including the Prix Décembre, the Candide Preis, and the Prix du Livre Inter.

In 2010, he published Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants, a short story based on a likely fictional episode in the life of Michelangelo. It tells the story of a trip to Constantinople, where Michelangelo arrived on May 13, 1506, at the invitation of Sultan Bayezid II. It depicts a tolerant, European Constantinople that welcomes Jews expelled from Spain by the Catholic monarchs. It received the 2010 Prix Goncourt des Lycéens and the 25th Prix du Livre en Poitou-Charentes & La Voix des Lecteurs.

Énard founded the contemporary art publishing house Scrawitch in 2011. A gallery by the same name existed until 2014 in the 11th arrondissement in Paris, co-founded with lithographer Thomas Marin and philosopher Julien Bézille.

In 2012, Énard published Street of Thieves, the story of a young Moroccan man wandering around Spain during the Arab Spring and of the anti-austerity movement in Spain. At the 2012 edition of the Beirut Francophone Book Fair, the book received the first Liste Goncourt: Le choix de l'Orient prize, awarded by a jury of students from universities in Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries. The book also received the Prix de l'Académie littéraire de Bretagne et des Pays de la Loire in 2013.

His 2015 novel Compass, which deals with the West's view of the Orient, was awarded the Prix Goncourt.

Énard co-wrote the graphic novel Prendre refuge with illustrator Zeina Abirached in 2018. at the University of Bern. Since the beginning of the 2020 academic year, he has hosted and produced the radio program L'entretien littéraire on France Culture on Sundays.

At the end of 2020, Énard's novel The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild, which he worked on for 10 years, was published. Many of the book's stories take place in his hometown of Niort, in the Poitou region.

In 2026, The Deserters, Charlotte Mandell's English translation of Énard's 2023 novel Déserter, was longlisted for the International Booker Prize.

Works

Novels (2003) (Perfecting the Shot, English ed. 2026) (2005) (2007) (2008) (English ed. 2010) (2010) (Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants, English ed. 2018) (2011) (2012) (Street of Thieves, English ed. 2014) (2015) (Compass, English ed. 2017) (2018) (2020) (The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild, English ed. 2023) (2023) (The Deserters, English ed. 2025)

Graphic Novels (2013) . Illustrated by Pierre Marquès. (2018) . Co-written with and illustrated by Zeina Abirached.

Children’s Books (2009) . Illustrated by Pierre Marquès.

Poetry (2016)

Non-fiction (2020) (2024)

Awards and honours 2004 Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie for La Perfection du tir 2015 Best Translated Book Award longlist for Street of Thieves, translated by Charlotte Mandell 2016 Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters 2017 Man Booker International Prize shortlist for Compass, translated by Charlotte Mandell 2017 Premio Gregor von Rezzori – Città di Firenze for Bussola 2017 Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding