The Deserters by Mathias Enard
The latest novel by 2015 Prix Goncourt-winner Mathias Enard,The Deserterslays bare the devastations of war on the most intimate aspects of our lives.‘A heady and ambiguous mix of images, letters, admissions and reprisals from decades past … feature the rich, densely poetic language that readers of Énard may recall from previous works like Zone and Compass, a kind of neo-modernism replete with bits of interior monologue and adventurous indentation(Credit the translator Charlotte Mandell, adept in both registers.) In this artful and sad novel, forbearance is courage. The donkey – Énard’s quiet, Bressonian hero – endures its suffering with a moving stoicism. Refusing to desert its companions, it abides trials and privations in one ordeal after another. In the fallen world of TheDeserters this persistence is indistinguishable from grace.’
— Dustin Illingworth, New York Times
‘An engrossing study of the struggle to recover one’s humanity in the aftermath of extreme violence. Told through interwoven narratives, the novel plays artfully with time and space, gently zeroing in on its central themes and spanning a wide range of human experience. The Deserters is immediately reminiscent of Coetzee: it is sparse, intelligent and hungry for the big moral questions.’
— Arianne Shahvisi, author of Arguing for a Better World
‘By turns rich in searing detail and sweeping in its intellectual range, The Deserters threads together Europe’s weighty past with a darker elemental future. Mathias Enard, always masterful, creates a fiercely compelling dual narrative, surprising, glitteringly alive and unforgettable.’
— Claire Messud, author of This Strange Eventful History
‘With an unflinching depiction of civilization’s decline and its dystopic aftermath, Enard builds a great work of art from “the remains, the traces, and the great mourning of the future.” It’s a masterpiece.’
— Publishers Weekly, starred review
‘A powerfully elusive meditation by one of Europe’s most challenging authors.’
— Kirkus
‘I don’t know anybody who has quite [Enard’s] range.... Exquisitely written.’
— John Mitchinson, Monocle on Culture
‘Mathias Enard is one of the best contemporary French writers, and his works – ambitious, erudite, multifaceted, surprising and unconventional – are always worth reading, because they always strike a perfect balance between the best that literature can offer: pleasure and knowledge.’
— Javier Cercas, author of The Impostor
‘Every novel by Mathias Enard reminds me of the reasons why I read fiction. He is ambitious, erudite, full of life, and a wonderful stylist to boot. He is one of the great novelists of our time.’
— Juan Gabriel Vásquez, author of The Shape of the Ruins
‘All of Enard’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, New York Times
‘A novelist like Enard feels particularly necessary right now, though to say this may actually be to undersell his work. He is not a polemicist but an artist, one whose novels will always have something to say to us.’
— Christopher Beha, Harper’s
‘The most brazenly lapel-grabbing French writer since Michel Houellebecq.’
— Leo Robson, New Statesman
Mathias Enard, born in 1972, studied Persian and Arabic and spent long periods in the Middle East. He won several awards for Zone, including the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Décembre, and won the Choix Goncourt de l’Orient, the Prix littéraire de la Porte Dorée and the Prix du Roman-News for Street of Thieves. For Compass, he won the 2015 Prix Goncourt, the 2017 Leipziger Book Award for European Understanding, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori and was shortlisted for the 2017 International Booker Prize. The Deserters is his sixth novel to appear with Fitzcarraldo Editions.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781804271636 |
| ISBN 10 | 1804271632 |
| Title | The Deserters |
| Author | Mathias Enard |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Fitzcarraldo Editions |
| Year published | 2025-05-08 |
| Number of pages | 224 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |