Mathias Enard was born in Niort in 1972. He first studied contemporary art in Paris and published a collection of poems entitled Travail de nuit [Night Work]. Subsequently, he studied Arabic and Persian at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations (INALCO) before working on his doctorate at the ‘Iranian World’ research unit of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

In the summer of 1991, he travelled to Lebanon with a photographer: it was not only his first contact with the Arab world but also, indirectly, with the civil war and warring militia. He published another collection of poems „Parfois entre nous la mer“ [Sometimes the Ocean’s Between Us].

In 1992 Enard spent a few months studying Persian in Teheran. He also travelled extensively in the Arab world and studied at the French Institute for Arabic Studies in Damascus for a year.

Deepening his knowledge of Arabic literature, Enard attempted his first translations. He got to know the poet Jacques Reda, and in Damascus he also met Mahmoud Darwish and Nazih Abu Afash.

Enard lived for two years in Soueida, a village in southern Syria, before returning to Teheran, where he met warriors from the Iran-Iraq War. He began writing his novel „La Perfection du tir“ [Perfecting the Shot], in which he tells the story of a sharp shooter who is torn between loving and killing. The book was published in 2003 and won the Prix Edmée de la Rochefoucauld and the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie.

After this, Enard settled in Barcelona, where he now teaches Arabic at the university.
In 2005, he published his novel „Remonter l’Orenoque“ [Going Up the Orinoco River]. His burlesque essay on terrorism appeared in 2007: „Bréviaire des artificiers“[Bombmaker’s Breviary]. Since 2004 he has also been on the editorial board of the magazine Inculte in Paris.

Enard’s latest, most ambitious and successful book was published in 2008 and is entitled „Zone“. It is an epic work written in one sentence over 500 pages, which tells of the wars of the 20th century. The main character is the former secret agent Francis who wants to change his life. On a train ride from Milan to Rome, he looks back through a meandering stream of memories at his career on the battlefields, first in Algeria and Lebanon, and lastly in Yugoslavia. „Zone“, which has won several prizes (most recently the Prix du Livre Inter 2009), is a brilliant narrative work on war and despair. It bears testimony to Enard’s ingenuity in finding a subtle linguistic form for his incredibly detailed knowledge. Zone is a new Iliad at the end of a barbarous century.

„Zone“ will be available in German (Berlin Verlag) in 2010.

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