Author on Tour: Mathias Énard

About Mathias Énard

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), Zone, and The Deserters (longlisted for the International Booker Prize, and winner of the FAF Translation Prize)—as well as being a translator from Persian and Arabic.

About Perfecting the Shot

(New Directions, translated by Charlotte Mandell, 2026)

In an unnamed city completely torn apart by civil war, a teenage sniper has only one goal: to fire the perfect shot. He sublimates himself into his weapon, controls his breath, stays serenely calm, and listens to his body and the beat of his heart. Lying in wait on rooftops, he shoots at civilians while his mentally ill mother cowers in their apartment. But the violence eats away at any sense of morality as he kills indiscriminately, for the sake of killing itself. His routine is eventually disrupted by the arrival of Myrna, a fifteen-year-old girl hired to care for his mother, and his increasingly disturbing obsession with Myrna threatens to push them all over the brink. This unrelenting book, whose harrowing urgency belies its piercing lyricism, exposes the disastrous effects of extreme violence on society.

Perfecting the Shot will be released in October 2026.

Find more information here.

Schedule

Mathias Énard’s public schedule will include:

• Tuesday, October 13, 6pm: Conversation with Julian Lucas @ La Maison Française, NYU, New York, NY – event in English. RSVP here.
• Wednesday, October 14, 7pm: The International Library: Conversation with Nicole Krauss @ Center for Fiction, Brooklyn, NY  – event in English. RSVP here.
• Thursday, October 15, 6pm: Conversation with Christopher Byrd @ Villa Albertine, New York, NY – event in English. RSVP here.
• Saturday, October 16: Participation in the Boston Book Festival @ The French Library, Boston, MA – event in English. More info to come.

For more information, please email Noémie Jornet: noemie.jornet@villa-albertine.org.