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charlotte_molloy_'s review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
5.0
jgauthier's review against another edition
3.0
Read in translation. This dark, existential coming-of-age story follows Lakhdar, a Moroccan teen, from his homeless youth to brushes with radical Islam and a fragile illegal-alien existence in Barcelona. All the while, he struggles to escape the labels others attribute to him — Moroccan, Muslim — and chart his own path.
Finished this book in four days — the prose and plot had quite the pull on me. Good book.
Finished this book in four days — the prose and plot had quite the pull on me. Good book.
cjf's review against another edition
4.0
Around 3 a.m. last night, I picked up Paterson, a book-length poem by William Carlos Williams that I have not read, and got into bed, finally pulling into the sheets. I opened to the author’s preface to the first section, which describes the task of beginning, the precariousness inherent (apparent here), and dogs. Still disinterested in sleep, I focused my energies, however diminishing, onto Williams’s mongrels.
"To make a start,
out of particulars
and make them general, rolling
up the sum, by defective means —
Sniffing the trees,
just another dog
among a lot of dogs. What
else is there? And to do?
The rest have run out —
after the rabbits.
Only the lame stands — on
three legs. Scratch front and back.
Deceive and eat. Dig
a musty bone."
This is no Homeric invocation of the Muse; it’s the excavation of some insipid remains by a hobbling mutt. Your muse is dead. I remembered then that Mathis Énard’s new novel, Street of Thieves, also begins with dogs.
"Men are dogs, they rub against each other in misery, they roll around in filth and can’t get out of it, lick their fur and their genitals all day long, lying in the dust, ready to do anything for the scrap of meat or the rotten bone they want someone to throw at them, and I’m just like them, I’m a human being, hence the depraved piece of garbage that’s a slave to its instincts, a dog, a dog that bites when it’s afraid and begs for caresses. I can see my childhood clearly, my puppy dog’s life in Tangier; my young mutt’s strayings, my groans of a beaten mongrel; I understand my frenzy around women, which I took for love, and above all I understand the absence of a master, which makes us all roam around looking for him in the dark, sniffing each other, lost, aimless."
While Énard’s opening’s primary focus is the nature of man, the passage does serve as a subtle microcosm of the larger, more interesting themes he will eventually explore and poses the pertinent question that Williams, too, asks: What happens when your master is gone?
There are lesser masters than Williams’s, which, however seemingly absent, is ultimately creative. There are masters of violence, terror, and confusion. Ones bent on destruction. And ones insatiable that never disappear. These are masters that surround Énard’s narrator, Lakdhar: teen in exile, sometimes practicing Muslim, and bookseller. And lame dog; he, like Williams’s speaker, is less driven by instinct to serve than his peers. He’s not content to chase rabbits. His aimlessness is more specific, more discerning than that. Which is to say that a difference between Williams’s speaker and Lakdhar’s is their positioning in the world, which may in fact be where this, however coincidental, comparison falters. (It had a good run.) Though Williams doesn’t see a master at the moment, I don’t think, if he did, it’d be one of creation, not destruction. Williams’s is the master of few, not many, the kind of master that Lakdhar is looking for but, for reasons outside of his control, cannot find.
To conclude as precariously as I began, I’ll say that Street of Thieves is a fated novel, one whose protagonist — his entire world — is subjected to the muses, not of creation, but of destruction. He doesn’t choose them. He has no choice. Lakdhar’s doggish life, in his own words: “I ate from the hand of Fate.”
"To make a start,
out of particulars
and make them general, rolling
up the sum, by defective means —
Sniffing the trees,
just another dog
among a lot of dogs. What
else is there? And to do?
The rest have run out —
after the rabbits.
Only the lame stands — on
three legs. Scratch front and back.
Deceive and eat. Dig
a musty bone."
This is no Homeric invocation of the Muse; it’s the excavation of some insipid remains by a hobbling mutt. Your muse is dead. I remembered then that Mathis Énard’s new novel, Street of Thieves, also begins with dogs.
"Men are dogs, they rub against each other in misery, they roll around in filth and can’t get out of it, lick their fur and their genitals all day long, lying in the dust, ready to do anything for the scrap of meat or the rotten bone they want someone to throw at them, and I’m just like them, I’m a human being, hence the depraved piece of garbage that’s a slave to its instincts, a dog, a dog that bites when it’s afraid and begs for caresses. I can see my childhood clearly, my puppy dog’s life in Tangier; my young mutt’s strayings, my groans of a beaten mongrel; I understand my frenzy around women, which I took for love, and above all I understand the absence of a master, which makes us all roam around looking for him in the dark, sniffing each other, lost, aimless."
While Énard’s opening’s primary focus is the nature of man, the passage does serve as a subtle microcosm of the larger, more interesting themes he will eventually explore and poses the pertinent question that Williams, too, asks: What happens when your master is gone?
There are lesser masters than Williams’s, which, however seemingly absent, is ultimately creative. There are masters of violence, terror, and confusion. Ones bent on destruction. And ones insatiable that never disappear. These are masters that surround Énard’s narrator, Lakdhar: teen in exile, sometimes practicing Muslim, and bookseller. And lame dog; he, like Williams’s speaker, is less driven by instinct to serve than his peers. He’s not content to chase rabbits. His aimlessness is more specific, more discerning than that. Which is to say that a difference between Williams’s speaker and Lakdhar’s is their positioning in the world, which may in fact be where this, however coincidental, comparison falters. (It had a good run.) Though Williams doesn’t see a master at the moment, I don’t think, if he did, it’d be one of creation, not destruction. Williams’s is the master of few, not many, the kind of master that Lakdhar is looking for but, for reasons outside of his control, cannot find.
To conclude as precariously as I began, I’ll say that Street of Thieves is a fated novel, one whose protagonist — his entire world — is subjected to the muses, not of creation, but of destruction. He doesn’t choose them. He has no choice. Lakdhar’s doggish life, in his own words: “I ate from the hand of Fate.”
mcglassa's review
4.0
I found this novel engaging and driven. Enard immerses us in complex topics of religion, sexuality, immigration... the list goes on, all wrapped up in a riveting plot that maintained my interest throughout. The narrative has a magical, dreamy, glow and was a joy to read. The three parts of the novel weren't necessarily distinct but flow together and different themes and genres weave throughout the novel. The ending becomes a sort of building psychological study and ends the novel perfectly.
daneekasghost's review
5.0
It's just a really good story that's really well told. It's current and exciting and it kept me reading throughout.
arirang's review
3.0
Matthias Énard 's Rue des voleur (2012), was translated as Street of Thieves (2012) by Charlotte Mandell.
It is rather different in style to the two novels on which his reputation mainly rests in the UK, the brilliant Zone (2008), translated as Zone (2010), and Boussole (2015), translated as Compass (2017), both again translated by Mandell. There is rather less of the generous history erudition, and rather more on present-day current affairs, and the resulting novel is a more conventional Bildungsroman.
The novel takes its title from the Carrer d’en Robador in the Barrio of Barcelona. The story is narrated by Lahkdar, a late-teen Moroccan at the time of 2011-12 when most of the novel is set. He works his way from his native Tangier to Barcelona via a brief stay in Tunis and a variety of odd jobs (working in a bookshop for an ostensibly respectable Islamic foundation that he suspects may have involvement in terrorism, digitisting the records of WW1 dead, helping repatriate dead bodies from Spain to Morocco particularly those that drowned making illegal crossings), his historical inspiration the 14th century scholar and explorer Ibn Battuta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta).
The novel is set in a background of the Arab Spring which spread from Tunisia across north Africa, and the anti-austerity Indignados movement in Spain ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-austerity_movement_in_Spain)
Énard explained his motivation for writing the novel in a Granta interview (https://granta.com/mathias-enard-and-ian-maleney-in-conversation/)
It was the idea I had in mind when what we call, or used to call, the Arabic Spring began. I was in Barcelona, and there was also the Indignados movement at the same time. I... At that point, I thought I could write something, or try to write a novel ‘live’, a live novel that would be kind of like reportage, but with characters and fictions. And I had a small office in a very small street of Barcelona called Street of Thieves, Carrer Robadors in Catalan. I always met Moroccan youngsters in the street, or at the bar, selling stolen bikes – funny people, nice guys. So I met one, and he told me his story, where he came from in Tangier, or on the outskirts of Tangier. And I asked him how he got to Barcelona, and it was a crazy story. And I said, Oh, that could be my character. A Moroccan youngster who could testify to the events in Morocco and in Barcelona, and through his eyes I could find a voice, a foreign way to see all these things. So I began reporting. I was writing a fiction, but at the same time I was following the events with this character, Lakhdar.
It’s true though, the theme of the book is the borders you have to cross to go from one place to another. It’s not only about crossing – crossing the straits physically, finding a way to enter Spain – it’s also how can you cross a linguistic barrier, an economic one, a social one; or what does it mean to bond with someone, to fall in love with someone you know has a very different history, a very different culture? The book is about that. It was very interesting entering those subjects through Lakhdar’s eyes.
He also addressed the difference in style to his more substantial works, ultimately suggesting this was something of an unsuccessful experiment.
Interviewer:
Usually there is so much information in your work, so much historical knowledge. That isn’t really present in Street of Thieves, and I think it results in a much more traditional structure than one finds in the rest of your work.
Énard:
Yes, the project itself was crazy because it was against what I normally do. It was interesting because it’s always interesting to be displaced, or in a place where you wouldn’t usually put yourself. So I enjoyed writing it, it was a great experience, but afterwards I realised that, for me, it was not really satisfying. If you can take the time to think about the book, its architecture, characters, plots and writing, then for me it’s more satisfying. If you write ‘live’, you’re writing in a few months. It tends to be linear, because you have no time to think of something more complex. And at the end, it might give the reader the idea that the world is simpler than it is. And what interests me now is to give back the world its complexity. Make it readable, of course, but there is a kind of complexity in it. Street of Thieves, for me, is too straightforward. The world is not like that, I think.
Overall: 3.5 stars. This isn't Enard at his finest - for that see Zone - although still sub-par experimental Énard is well above average for anyone else. It probably deserves 4 stars in absolute terms but rounded down to 3 given I only awarded his other books 4 stars.
It is rather different in style to the two novels on which his reputation mainly rests in the UK, the brilliant Zone (2008), translated as Zone (2010), and Boussole (2015), translated as Compass (2017), both again translated by Mandell. There is rather less of the generous history erudition, and rather more on present-day current affairs, and the resulting novel is a more conventional Bildungsroman.
The novel takes its title from the Carrer d’en Robador in the Barrio of Barcelona. The story is narrated by Lahkdar, a late-teen Moroccan at the time of 2011-12 when most of the novel is set. He works his way from his native Tangier to Barcelona via a brief stay in Tunis and a variety of odd jobs (working in a bookshop for an ostensibly respectable Islamic foundation that he suspects may have involvement in terrorism, digitisting the records of WW1 dead, helping repatriate dead bodies from Spain to Morocco particularly those that drowned making illegal crossings), his historical inspiration the 14th century scholar and explorer Ibn Battuta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta).
The novel is set in a background of the Arab Spring which spread from Tunisia across north Africa, and the anti-austerity Indignados movement in Spain ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-austerity_movement_in_Spain)
Énard explained his motivation for writing the novel in a Granta interview (https://granta.com/mathias-enard-and-ian-maleney-in-conversation/)
It was the idea I had in mind when what we call, or used to call, the Arabic Spring began. I was in Barcelona, and there was also the Indignados movement at the same time. I... At that point, I thought I could write something, or try to write a novel ‘live’, a live novel that would be kind of like reportage, but with characters and fictions. And I had a small office in a very small street of Barcelona called Street of Thieves, Carrer Robadors in Catalan. I always met Moroccan youngsters in the street, or at the bar, selling stolen bikes – funny people, nice guys. So I met one, and he told me his story, where he came from in Tangier, or on the outskirts of Tangier. And I asked him how he got to Barcelona, and it was a crazy story. And I said, Oh, that could be my character. A Moroccan youngster who could testify to the events in Morocco and in Barcelona, and through his eyes I could find a voice, a foreign way to see all these things. So I began reporting. I was writing a fiction, but at the same time I was following the events with this character, Lakhdar.
It’s true though, the theme of the book is the borders you have to cross to go from one place to another. It’s not only about crossing – crossing the straits physically, finding a way to enter Spain – it’s also how can you cross a linguistic barrier, an economic one, a social one; or what does it mean to bond with someone, to fall in love with someone you know has a very different history, a very different culture? The book is about that. It was very interesting entering those subjects through Lakhdar’s eyes.
He also addressed the difference in style to his more substantial works, ultimately suggesting this was something of an unsuccessful experiment.
Interviewer:
Usually there is so much information in your work, so much historical knowledge. That isn’t really present in Street of Thieves, and I think it results in a much more traditional structure than one finds in the rest of your work.
Énard:
Yes, the project itself was crazy because it was against what I normally do. It was interesting because it’s always interesting to be displaced, or in a place where you wouldn’t usually put yourself. So I enjoyed writing it, it was a great experience, but afterwards I realised that, for me, it was not really satisfying. If you can take the time to think about the book, its architecture, characters, plots and writing, then for me it’s more satisfying. If you write ‘live’, you’re writing in a few months. It tends to be linear, because you have no time to think of something more complex. And at the end, it might give the reader the idea that the world is simpler than it is. And what interests me now is to give back the world its complexity. Make it readable, of course, but there is a kind of complexity in it. Street of Thieves, for me, is too straightforward. The world is not like that, I think.
Overall: 3.5 stars. This isn't Enard at his finest - for that see Zone - although still sub-par experimental Énard is well above average for anyone else. It probably deserves 4 stars in absolute terms but rounded down to 3 given I only awarded his other books 4 stars.
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