09/17/2018Zone and Compass (winner of the Prix Goncourt), making his latest translation into English, a slim and studious volume, a surprising and exciting break from form. Set in 1506, it is the story of Michelangelo Buonarotti, still in his early 30s and not yet at the height of his renown, smarting from his perceived crude treatment at the hands of the Pope and eager to outdo his rivals, Leonardo Da Vinci and Raphael. The proud artist leaves Rome to accept a commission from the Sultan Ali Pasha of Constantinople to design the bridge that will connect the great city with the greater Holy Roman Empire. But in Constantinople, Michelangelo finds himself beguiled by the company he keeps: Manuel the translator, Mesihi the poet, and the page Falachi, with whom Michelangelo is something more than friends. Michelangelo spends his days in Constantinople arduously designing the bridge, and his nights in almost psychedelic debauchery. The flavors of the East will prove transformative to the Florentine, as Renaissance sensibility collides with the flourishing Muslim world, leaving him to conclude that “we all ape God in His absence.” a historical novel of exquisite beauty. (Nov.)
"Too interesting to pass up."
"Mathias Énard weaves tantalizing facts and fragments into the tapestry of a slender historical novel."
"Even as the tragedies of history are spoken, the listeners are asleep. And yet, Énard remains optimistic, his novels a powerful reminder that the possibility for connection remains."
The Millions - Isaac Zisman
"The story of Il Maestro’s invitation from the sultan to design a bridge over the Golden Horn is beautifully wrought in its simplicity—credit must go to Charlotte Mandell’s translation—with a perfectly paced narrative that reaches a dramatic denouement...Enard’s taut prose carries the reader swiftly and satisfyingly through chapters (which are more like fragments, really) to the extent that one does not wish for the tale to end. "
"Énard packs a feast for the senses into this short book."
Financial Times - Boyd Tonkin
"In his fiction, Énard is constructing an intricate, history-rich vision of a persistently misunderstood part of the world—mesmerizing."
The New Yorker - Jacob Silverman
"There is a lush materiality to Énard’s prose, thick and smooth, so that following the artist’s expeditions through Ottoman opium dens feels nearly as immersive as being in them."
"Any year Mathias Enard brings us new work is always worth celebrating. He invites us to engage with subjects as intricate as beauty, history and art, and always finds some way to make it still feel vital, leaving you with a resounding sense of hope and generosity. While Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants may at times feel like reading the most beautiful poem as the world slowly degrades around you, it might also convince you that art is invincible. An important idea to hold on to, I think, as we wait for our political pantomimes to play out. Charlotte Mandell translates and the book is a miracle."
New Statesman - Guy Gunaratne
"Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants (deftly translated, like Énard’s three previous English releases, by Charlotte Mandell) is a tale of bastard genius that might have been, and a cautionary fable about the consequences of parochial timidity."
When Michelangelo Went to Constantinople - The New Yorker - Julian Lucas
"No one else writes like Mathias Énard."
"Continues Énard’s deep, humanistic explorations of the historical and ongoing connections between Europe and Asia, Islamdom and Christendom."
"If all you have is a bridge, then everything begins to look like a chasm; the incessant drive to overcome all differences has, unsurprisingly, created more division. Énard’s radical suggestion has been, instead, to think about who is being connected to whom, and what is being bypassed along the way."
Art in America - Missed Connections: A Novel Imagines Michelangelo in Istanbul
"All of Énard’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."
The New York Times Book Review - Joshua Cohen
"In this charming little reverie of a book, inspiration springs from our unguarded confrontations with the unfamiliar."
The Wall Street Journal - Sam Sacks
"If all you have is a bridge, then everything begins to look like a chasm; the incessant drive to overcome all differences has, unsurprisingly, created more division. Énard’s radical suggestion has been, instead, to think about who is being connected to whom, and what is being bypassed along the way."
Art in America - Missed Connections: A Novel Imagines Michelangelo in Istanbul
2018-08-21
Continuing his explorations of the meeting of East and West, French novelist Énard (Compass , 2017) imagines a lost episode in the life of Michelangelo Buonarroti.
History tells us that the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid, having rejected a design by Leonardo da Vinci to join Europe to Asia by a bridge over the Golden Horn, approached Michelangelo with the same project. History adds that Michelangelo said no. But what if the answer, Énard posits, had been yes, as newly discovered documents suggest? Michelangelo, after all, had been having endless troubles getting paid by Julius II, "the warlike, authoritarian pope who has treated him so poorly." The temptation to slip across the border of the Papal States into Florence and thence to Venice and Constantinople would have been great, especially because the sultan knew just how to appeal to him by contrasting him to Leonardo: "You will surpass him in glory if you accept, for you will succeed where he has failed, and you will give the world a monument without equal …." That, and he'd quintuple his salary. Intrigue immediately ensues, for there are spies—of the pope, of Venice, of the sultan—everywhere, and where there are spies, there are lures and temptations. And then there's Mesihi, the Kosovar Muslim who guides Michelangelo between two worlds and becomes more than a Virgil in the bargain, first taking Michelangelo to the former cathedral and now mosque of the Hagia Sophia, now devoted, as Michelangelo thinks, to "the one Dante sends to the fifth circle of Hell." In his way, Mesihi is as great an artist as the master, a man who "loved men and women, women and men, sang the praises of his patron and the delights of spring, both sweet and full of despair at the same time." Naturally, cultures and personalities come into collision, and all does not end well for Michelangelo, "afraid of love just as he's afraid of Hell," or, for that matter, for anyone in Michelangelo's orbit.
An elegant meditation on what might have been.
"Énard weaves an imaginative and suspenseful tale of civilizations and personalities clashing, of love, of being an artist in a violent era."
New Statesman Books of the Year 2018 | Spectator Books of the Year 2018
‘Any year Mathias Enard brings us new work is always worth celebrating. He invites us to engage with subjects as intricate as beauty, history and art, and always finds some way to make it still feel vital, leaving you with a resounding sense of hope and generosity. While Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants may at times feel like reading the most beautiful poem as the world slowly degrades around you, it might also convince you that art is invincible. An important idea to hold on to, I think, as we wait for our political pantomimes to play out. Charlotte Mandell translates and the book is a miracle.’ New Statesman
‘In some alternative universe, a beautifully elegant four-arched Renaissance bridge straddles the waters of the Golden Horn in the city now known as Istanbul. As every schoolchild in that other world might know, Michelangelo designed it in 1506 after Sultan Bayezid II invited the Florentine sculptor, architect and painter to work in Constantinople ... Out of the tantalising might-have-been of Bayezid’s bid for Michelangelo’s genius, French writer and Middle Eastern scholar Mathias Enard has crafted Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants , a compact fiction with much to say about the bridges – personal and cultural – that we cross or fail to cross. ... Translated with sensuous flair by Charlotte Mandell ... Enard packs a feast for the senses into this short book.’Financial Times
‘[A]n elegant, passionate love letter to world civilisation and its agents, most prominently Michelangelo, whose sojourn in Constantinople in 1506 infused his work with oriental poetry. Charlotte Mandell’s translation is yet another proof that great books can, and should, travel.’Spectator
