Mathias Enard studied Arabic and Persian and spent long periods in the Middle East before settling in Barcelona in 2000. He has been awarded, amongst others, the Prix de la Francophonie (2003) for his first novel The Perfection of the Shot; the Prix Décembre (2008) and the Prix du Livre Inter (2009) for Zone; the Prix Goncourt des Étudiants (2010) for Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants; the Goncourt Prize (2015) for Compass; and the Joseph Kessel Prize (2025) for Melancholy of the Confines: North. He has also been awarded the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture (2016) and the Albert Camus Prize (2022) for his body of work. He was writer-in-residence at the Prado Museum in 2025. He is currently a member of the German Academy for Language and Literature. His most recent novels include The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild and Deserting, which was shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize. Melancholy of the Boundaries: North is his first work of non-fiction.
