The Deserters
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A filthy and exhausted soldier emerges from the Mediterranean wilderness--he is escaping from an unspecified war, trying to flee incessant violence and find refuge in solitude. Meanwhile, on September 11, 2001, aboard a small cruise ship, a scientific conference takes place to pay tribute to renowned East German mathematician Paul Heudeber, a committed communist and anti-fascist, and a survivor of the camps at Buchenwald.The tension grows between these two narrative threads, and--pulled together in Mathias Énard's enchanting, brilliant, erudite prose--time itself seems to become tightly interwoven, drawn together by the immense stakes of love and politics, loyalty and belief, hope and survival.
About this Author
Mathias Énard is the author of Compass (winner of the Prix Goncourt, the Leipzig Prize, and the Premio von Rezzori, and shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize); The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild ; Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants ; Zone ; and Street of Thieves . A Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, Mandell has translated works by a number of important French authors, including Proust, Flaubert, Genet, Maupassant, and Blanchot.
Reviews
""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.""
""Énard fuses recollection and scholarly digression into a swirling, hypnotic, stream-of-consciousness narration.""
""A powerfully elusive meditation by one of Europe's most challenging authors.""
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