Compass (novel)

Compass
First edition (French)
AuthorMathias Énard
Original titleBoussole
TranslatorCharlotte Mandell..
LanguageFrench
PublisherActes Sud
Publication date
2015
Publication placeFrance
Published in English
2017
ISBN9780811226622

Compass (French: Boussole ) is a novel by the French writer Mathias Énard, published in 2015.[1]

The book received the Prix Goncourt.[2]

Premise

During a sleepless night in Vienna, the musicologist Franz Ritter looks back on his life, his university career, his stays in the Orient, and his love, Sarah.[3]

Reception

Writing in Le Monde, Raphaëlle Leyris remarked that if Énard's earlier novel Zone was a book of violence and hate, Compass may be the antidote with the taste of the unknown and curiosity for the other at its heart.[4] Phillipe Lançon [fr] described Compass as an ‘intimate and effusive encyclopedia disguised as a novel’. He went on to make reference to Enard's erudition and background as an orientalist.[5]

In a piece on Orientalism published in the New York Review of Books, Adam Shatz argued that with Compass Enard had failed to ‘transcend the oppressive nature of Orientalism, via paradoxically, the Orientalist tradition itself’.[6] The novel has also been described in the press as a ‘masterful novel’ that recognises the contribution of Islamic and Middle Eastern cultures to the canon,[7] ‘lyrically and intellectually rich’,[8] and a ‘powerful work’ that also threatens to send the reader to sleep with its level of detail.[9]

See also

References

  1. ^ Mathias Enard (2017). Compass. Translated by Charlotte Mandell. New York: New Directions. ISBN 9780811226622.
  2. ^ Raphaëlle Leyris. "Prix Goncourt pour "L'Ordre du jour Prix Goncourt : Mathias Enard récompensé pour " Boussole "" (in French). Le Parisien. Retrieved 2018-08-17.
  3. ^ Joshua Cohen (30 June 2017). "A Prize-Winning French Novel About the Western Obsession With the East". New York Times.
  4. ^ Leyris, Raphaëlle (3 November 2015). "Avec Mathias Enard, le prix Goncourt regarde vers l'Est". Le Monde (in French). Retrieved 20 November 2021.
  5. ^ Lançon, Philippe (7 October 2015). "Mathias Enard, déroutante "Boussole"". Libération (in French). Retrieved 20 November 2021.
  6. ^ Shatz, Adam (20 May 2019). "'Orientalism,' Then and Now". New York Review of Books (in French). Retrieved 20 November 2021.
  7. ^ Ervin, Andrew (3 April 2017). "'Compass': Mathias Énard's brilliant dark night of the soul". Washington Post. Retrieved 20 November 2021.
  8. ^ "Compass". Kirkus Reviews. 23 January 2017. Retrieved 20 November 2021.
  9. ^ Poole, Steven (7 April 2017). "Compass by Mathias Énard review – a dreamlike study of Orientalism". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 November 2021.


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