Featuring analysis of MFA vs. NYC literary cultures, pro-life vs. animal rights politics, the failure of California, the politics of white victimization, American elitism, and how an Indian management guru made his money. Also featuring fiction by Mathias Enard and Sheila Heti and four responses to Jonathan Franzen's Freedom.

n+1 Issue 10: Self-Improvement

Marco Roth

NIKIL SAVAL

Mark Greif

Benjamin Kunkel

Keith Gessen

Sheila Heti

Mathias Énard

Kristen Dombek

Daniel Albert

Richard Beck

Elizabeth Gumport

Bruce Robbins

Siddhartha, Deb

n+1 Foundation

Street of Thieves

Literature & Fiction

Translated by Charlotte Mandell

Contemporary

Fitzcarraldo Editions

The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild

In 1506, Michelangelo - a young but already renowned sculptor - is invited by the sultan of Constantinople to design a bridge over the Golden Horn. The sultan has offered, alongside an enormous payment, the promise of immortality, since Leonardo da Vinci's design was rejected: 'You will surpass him in glory if you accept, for you will succeed where he has failed, and you will give the world a monument without equal.' Michelangelo, after some hesitation, flees Rome and an irritated Pope Julius II - whose commission he leaves unfinished - and arrives in Constantinople for this truly epic project. Once there, he explores the beauty and wonder of the Ottoman Empire, sketching and describing his impressions along the way, and becomes immersed in cloak-and-dagger palace intrigues as he struggles to create what could be his greatest architectural masterwork. TELL THEM OF BATTLES, KINGS AND ELEPHANTS - constructed from real historical fragments - is a thrilling page-turner about why stories are told, why bridges are built, and how seemingly unmatched pieces, seen from the opposite sides of civilization, can mirror one another.

Tell Them Of Battles Kings & Elephants

Literary

Ces betes qui m'ont fait homme

Presses pocket

Par une nuit décisive, un voyageur lourd de secrets prend le train de Milan pour Rome. Quinze années d'activité comme agent de renseignements dans sa Zone (d'abord l'Algérie, puis tout le Proche-Orient) ont livré à Francis Servain Mirkovié les noms et la mémoire de nombreux acteurs de l'ombre (marchands d'armes, terroristes, commanditaires ou intermédiaires, criminels de guerre en fuite...). Mais lui-même a accompli sa part de carnage lorsque la guerre en Croatie et en Bosnie l'a jeté dans le cycle enivrant de la violence. Le train démarre et, avec lui, s'élance une immense phrase qui explore l'espace-temps pour évoquer toutes les guerres méditerranéennes. Dans les réminiscences de ce passager de la nuit se mêlent bourreaux et victimes, héros et anonymes, peuples déportés ou génocidés, mercenaires et témoins, peintres et littérateurs, évangélistes et martyrs... Et aussi les Parques de sa vie intérieure : la paisible Marianne, la trop perspicace Stéphanie, la silencieuse Sashka... Palimpseste ferroviaire en vingt-quatre "chants", conduits d'un seul souffle et magistralement orchestrés, le roman de Mathias Enard compose une impressionnante Iliade de notre temps.

Zone ( en francais ) (French Edition)

French and European Publications Inc

Edition de 2014.Avoir vingt ans à l heure du printemps arabe, parler le français des romans de série noire, serviravec inquiétude les Frères musulmans, placer la liberté plus haut que la religion, faire acte dechair avec une jeune Barcelonaise et, de Tanger, contempler le mince détroit par où gagner ce quisemble le jardin des délices...

Rue des Voleurs (French Edition)

Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants (French Edition)

Genre Fiction

WINNER FRANCE'S TOP LITERARY PRIZE, LE PRIX GONCOURT 2015 This is about one man, an Austrian musicologist called Franz Ritter, who is currently ill with an unspecified disease, who throws away the tablets his doctor gives him and lies awake at night, thinking about various things. These include his unrequited love for the French woman Sarah, his wide-ranging knowledge and views on primarily Western classical music but also some Middle Eastern music and, above all, on matters relating to the Middle East and, in particular, the relationship between Europe and the Middle East. He himself has travelled extensively in the Middle East (though not as much as Sarah) and is very knowledgeable about the subject and about the various Westerners who travelled there and were influenced by that part of the world. He gives us a wide-ranging selection of often highly opinionated anecdotes on the topic, from the various European women who travelled and lived in the Middle East to those writers and musicians who were very much influenced by it, from Balzac, the first Western novelist to insert a piece of Arabic into his novels to composers such as Liszt and Bartók whose music was influenced by the Middle East. He damns Wagner and praises Beethoven (not least because he left Germany, preferring to live in Vienna) and even receives a compass modelled on Beethoven s as a gift from Sarah, a compass which points not North but East. Above all it is a wonderful and learned recitation of the intellectual history of Europe and its association with the Middle East, told in a non-learned manner, as well as a discussion of music and musicology, as Ritter lies in bed in his flat in Vienna, listening to his neighbour, Herr Gruber, wandering around.

Boussole: Prix Goncourt 2015 (French Edition)

Edition de 2008. 
Tout est dans la concentration. Tout est dans la patience, le calme, la maîtrise du souffle. Les bons jours, un seul tir parfaitement réussi suffit à lui donner la joie du travail accompli. Alors, le narrateur redescend de ce toit d'immeuble où il s'était embusqué pour tuer - dans cette ville livrée à la guerre civile -, et il rentre chez lui, retrouver sa mère à demi folle. Puis survient Myrna, une jeune fille de quinze ans embauchée pour prendre soin de la mère malade. Myrna dont la naissante féminité devient pour lui un objet de fascination, un rêve d'amour - l'autre chemin vers la perfection ? Mathias Enard décrit avec une saisissante empathie la psyché de son héros, complexe et perturbée. Le réalisme et la paradoxale poésie de sa langue reflètent la cruauté d'un monde abandonné au mal, sans autre bonheur que l'excellence dans l'art d'imposer inexorablement la loi de la force.

La Perfection du tir (Babel, No. 903)

Actes-sud

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Books by Mathias Énard