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Steve Mitchelmore has a post up about Zone, which is the first piece of writing I’ve seen about the book since TQC’s piece a couple of years ago. The book is publishing in English later this month.
Here’s a quote from Steve’s post.
Mirkovic’s voice, despite tumbling headlong onto the page in a continuous sentence, is still that of writing, both light enough to carry us forward, above the fray and relieving us of the past and future, yet also heavy with all that the words signify. The archive is heavy on the soul of Mirkovic the traveller, the escapee, because he discovers history is not temporal – all our yesterdays – but spatial. Ghosts from innumerable wars appear and disappear like disused stations, and tortured lives and gory deaths reverberate through the cage of narrative like thousands of sleepers. It is an experience of history explored most notably by WG Sebald, as highlighted by Will Self, and, if pushed to further the comparison, Zone has the quality of a highly fevered Sebald. But its other antecedents are clearer.
I’m about to send my own review to my editor at The National. Should be available soon.
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- Video of Charlotte Mandell Reading and Discussing Zone by Mathias Enard Mandell’s translation of Zone, the 500-page, 1-sentence novel is forthcoming, eventually, from Open Letter. You can whet your appetite for Zone by reading The Quarterly...
- Zone Wins French “People’s” Prize Chad notes that Mathias Enard’s novel Zone has won the Le prix du Livre Inter 2009, a French prize that Chad likens to a "people's"...
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I read an excerpt in N+1. It was exhillerating over a five-page period, but I’m worried that it might get tiring by the end.
Whoops. “Exhilarating.”