Mathias Énard Books in Order

Intelligence agent Francis Mirković travels from Milan to Rome with a briefcase of information he plans to sell. Memories of Mediterranean conflicts and his own violence follow him through the night as he hopes to abandon his old life.

Cast out by his family, Moroccan youth Lakhdar reaches Barcelona while political unrest and economic crisis reshape the Mediterranean. His search for a life beyond exile is threatened when a childhood friend becomes involved in a planned assassination.

Ill and unable to sleep in Vienna, musicologist Franz Ritter revisits his travels through the Middle East and the people who shaped them. At the center of his memories is Sarah, the scholar whose love has always eluded him.

In 1506, Michelangelo leaves Rome to design a bridge for the sultan of Constantinople. As he explores an unfamiliar culture and struggles with the commission, artistic ambition becomes entangled with the effort to connect seemingly divided worlds.

Anthropology student David Mazon moves to a French village to study rural life, unaware that its inhabitants belong to a cycle of reincarnation. Around an extravagant gravediggers’ feast, local encounters open into centuries of history, death and return.

A soldier fleeing an unnamed war seeks refuge in solitude while, elsewhere, a scientific gathering honors a communist mathematician and camp survivor. Their interwoven stories examine the pull of ideology, the aftermath of violence and the costs of loyalty.