The Goncourt Prize has just been awarded to Mathias Enard for Compass, published by Actes Sud.
In this fascinating story, carried by music and the encounter with the other, real and fantasized, in a kind of long journey from night to day, it is a near and distant East that is revealed and told at the same time. Mathias Enard brings us with virtuosity to "explore [the] crack" in love as to go as close as possible to "this in-between, this barzakh, the world between the worlds where artists and travellers fall".
By browsing the loving geography of Franz, Mathias Enard’s text leads us to the historic sites of Aleppo and Palmyra, "the Desert Bride", today targeted. It reminds us that art and culture are the foundation of our humanity.
I offer my warmest congratulations to the writer and his editor.