Mathias Enard

Mathias Enard was born in Niort in south-west France 1972. He spent many years travelling across the Middle East after his studies. He settled in Barcelona in 2000, where he worked as a translator and taught Arabic at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. His first novel, La Perfection du Tir, published in 2003, centred on a sniper during the civil war in an unnamed country believed to be based on Libya, and revealed his obsession with death. It received rave critical reviews and a French language prize. In 2008, he published Zone, which included a 500-page single sentence monologue about European cruelty and was given similar critical acclaim and three literary prizes. His short story Parle-leur de Batailles, de Rois et d'Élephants was awarded the Lycéens Goncourt prize, which is judged by high school students, in 2010. He won the 2015 Prix Goncourt for Boussoule.