Mathias Enard

Mathias Enard, also spelled Énard, was born in Niort, France, in 1972. He is a French writer who studied art history as well as Arabic and Persian at the INALCO in Paris and spent extended periods in the Middle East. His works include the novels Zone, Tell Them About Battles, Kings and Elephants, Street of Thieves, Compass, The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers and The Perfect Shot, as well as the poetry collection Last Message to the Proust Society of Barcelona. Zone received, among other distinctions, the Candide Prize; Compass was awarded the Prix Goncourt and, in 2017, the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding.