The International Booker Prize 2026 nominated author and translator reflect on their longlisted novel’s different voices and layers, and how fiction resists rigidity
Mathias Énard
Mathias Énard, born in 1972 in Niort, France, studied Persian and Arabic and has spent long periods in the Middle East
He won several awards for Zone, including the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Décembre, and won the Choix Goncourt de l’Orient, the Prix littéraire de la Porte Dorée and the Prix du Roman-News for Street of Thieves.
For Compass, he won the 2015 Prix Goncourt, the 2017 Leipziger Book Award for European Understanding, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori and was shortlisted for 2017’s International Booker Prize, with a translation by Charlotte Mandell.
Énard’s 11th novel, The Deserters, also translated into English by Charlotte Mandell, was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026.
Author photo © Pierre Marquès
The Deserters weaves together two stories, told in very contrasting voices, exploring themes of commitment and betrayal, hope and survival, during times of war
The International Booker Prize 2026 judges on The Deserters
All nominated books
A mesmerising and inventive novel that lays bare the devastations of war on the most intimate aspects of our lives
Mathias Énard’s immersive, nocturnal, musical journey is a declaration of admiration, a hand reaching out, a bridge of words between West and East
