A review by lightfoxing
Compass by Mathias Énard

5.0

Compass is a masterpiece. At once sweeping and small, two and a half decades and the entire Middle East explored in the length of a single insomniatic night in a small apartment in Vienna. Franz is at once fragile, endearing, and grotesque, his unrequited love for Sarah rendering him easy to relate to, invoking feelings of compassion and pity in the reader for a man who seems more like a baby bird, but also a sense of frustration at his impotence, his inability to carry on with his life. Enard weaves in throughout the entire novel, throughout the entire exploration of Franz's feelings for Sarah, for his career, the stories of the Orientalists of the 19th and 20th centuries, relating impressive amounts of information without ever venturing into the didactic, ushering us through years of and dozens of men and women who tread the field before Sarah and Franz, breathing life into them in short bursts without ever distracting from the two who reside at the heart of the book. We learn to love Sarah, and be frustrated by her, just as Franz does, and love the Middle East through both of them. While on the surface Compass relates the love of Franz for Sarah, at its core, it is a love letter to the Middle East, expressing with delicacy and tenderness the beauty found there. Heartbreaking, beautiful, and hopeful, with glorious prose and expertly sketched characters - if Compass doesn't win the Man Booker International, it will be a tragedy.