Zone - Softcover

Énard, Mathias

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1934824267 ISBN 13: 9781934824269

Publisher: Open Letter Books, 2010

Synopsis

"The novel of the decade, if not of the century."—Christophe Claro

Francis Servain Mirkovic, a French-born Croat who has been working for the French Intelligence Services for fifteen years, is traveling by train from Milan to Rome. He's carrying a briefcase whose contents he's selling to a representative from the Vatican; the briefcase contains a wealth of information about the violent history of the Zone—the lands of the Mediterranean basin, Spain, Algeria, Lebanon, Italy, that have become Mirkovic's specialty.

Over the course of a single night, Mirkovic visits the sites of these tragedies in his memory and recalls the damage that his own participation in that violence—as a soldier fighting for Croatia during the Balkan Wars—has wreaked in his own life. Mirkovic hopes that this night will be his last in the Zone, that this journey will expiate his sins, and that he can disappear with Sashka, the only woman he hasn't abandoned, forever . . .

One of the truly original books of the decade—and written as a single, hypnotic, propulsive, physically irresistible sentence—Mathias Énard's Zone provides an extraordinary and panoramic view of the turmoil that has long deviled the shores of the Mediterranean.

Mathias Énard has won numerous prizes for his works, including the the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Décembre for his novel Zone. He is currently a professor of Arabic at the University of Barcelona.

Charlotte Mandell has translated works from a number of important French authors, including Proust, Flaubert, Genet, Maupassant, and Blanchot, among others. She received a Literary Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for her translation of Enard's Zone.

Brian Evenson is a translator from French and the author of ten books of fiction, including The Open Curtain, which was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award.

About this title

About the Author

Mathias Énard has won numerous prizes for his works, including the the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Décembre for his novel Zone. He is currently a professor of Arabic at the University of Barcelona.

Charlotte Mandell has translated works from a number of important French authors, including Proust, Flaubert, Genet, Maupassant, and Blanchot, among others. She received a Literary Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for her translation of Enard's Zone.

Brian Evenson is a translator from French and the author of ten books of fiction, including The Open Curtain, which was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award.

Reviews

Starred Review. Homeric in its scope and grandeur, remarkable in its detail, Énard's American debut is a screaming take on history, war, and violence. Francis Servain Mirkovic, the son of a French father and a Croatian mother, is a spy whose job it is to resell stolen secrets to their legitimate owners. His "Zone" is the Mediterranean. It is the early 21st century and he is on his last mission, taking a train from Milan to Rome under a fake name and revisiting, in a blistering stream-of-consciousness (periods are few and far between), his childhood, his career, and various women, among them Sashka, the Russian painter he plans to meet in Rome; Marianne, from his youth; and Stéphanie, his fellow agent. Weighing heavily on him is his time with the Croatian army during the "Yugoslav madness," where he witnessed and took part in atrocities. As Francis's train speeds along, his story picks up momentum, becoming nearly frantic by the final stretch. Mandell's translation of the extravagant text is stunning. (Dec.) (c)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Open Letter Books
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1934824267
• ISBN 13: 9781934824269
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 517