The fifty-three-year-old French novelist Mathias Énard is most distinguished by the many prizes he has won, more numerous as they are than his books. They have certified him the best within various spheres, ranging from French, French or German, Francophone, translated into English, and European. Going even bigger, his 2015 novel Compass, which the Guardian described as a “dreamlike study of Orientalism”, was on the Man Booker International Prize shortlist. New Directions is now publishing his 2023 novel, Déserter, as The Deserters, in a translation by Charlotte Mandel, who has already done four of his novels. This one, actually, has not won any prizes, not in the original language. In English, the novel is “interesting”, as one tends to say in a spirit of both curiosity and charity.
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