"Over the past ten years the novels of Mathias Énard have enjoyed both widespread critical acclaim and commercial success. In 2015 Énard was awarded the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize, for Compass, a work which explores the fraught and often fruitful relationship between Europe and the Orient through the musings of an Austrian musicologist. Yet in spite of these successes, and Mathias Énard's penchant for filling his novels with historical fact, little has been written about his work in academic circles. This volume seeks to fill that gap and shed light on the narrative modalities that allow the author to transform erudition into narration. It also seeks to situate his work in the current literary context, which is being shaped ever more by historical narratives"--