{"id":273166,"date":"2009-08-14T15:54:50","date_gmt":"2009-08-14T15:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2009\/08\/14\/mathias-enard-in-le-monde\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:15:30","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:15:30","slug":"mathias-enard-in-le-monde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2009\/08\/14\/mathias-enard-in-le-monde\/","title":{"rendered":"Mathias Enard in Le Monde"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next fall we’ll be bringing out Zone<\/em>, a 517-page, one-sentence book by Matias Enard that was all the rage in France last fall and, at least from the sample I’ve read, is utterly amazing. (Here’s a Chicago Tribune<\/em> article<\/a> about the book, and here’s a thoughtful review<\/a> that ran at Quarterly Conversation.)<\/p>\n

We’ll have lots more info on Zone<\/em> in the near future, but for now, here’s a new story (I think—my French is not so good) from Enard in Le Monde<\/em>:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Cette histoire vient du djebel El-Arab, la montagne volcanique et noire qui s‘\u00e9tend, au sud de la Syrie, entre les villes de Shahba et Salkhad. Massif myst\u00e9rieux et sauvage, parsem\u00e9 de vestiges antiques et peupl\u00e9 de Druzes dont on a pu dire, autrefois, qu’ils \u00e9taient tout aussi myst\u00e9rieux et sauvages que leurs collines pierreuses. En hiver, la neige y est fr\u00e9quente, et les villages du centre de la r\u00e9gion peuvent \u00eatre isol\u00e9s plusieurs jours de suite. L‘\u00e9lectricit\u00e9 y est rare et le t\u00e9l\u00e9phone le plus souvent absent. Cet apr\u00e8s-midi-l\u00e0, aux environs de 17 heures, lorsque l’ing\u00e9nieur Mohsen monte dans son pick-up Toyota pour regagner la ville, il fait d\u00e9j\u00e0 nuit noire. Les cong\u00e8res dessinent des coul\u00e9es blanches contre les maisons basses et les murets ; l’horizon de basalte rend l’obscurit\u00e9 encore plus opaque. Les vergers de pommiers sans feuilles s’animent comme des champs de pendus dans la lumi\u00e8re des phares.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

L’ing\u00e9nieur Mohsen a pour compagnie un thermos de th\u00e9, une cassette du chanteur Amr Diab dans son autoradio et les cris aigus des chacals. L’ing\u00e9nieur Mohsen n’a pas peur. L’ing\u00e9nieur Mohsen conna\u00eet bien ces contr\u00e9es, il y vient r\u00e9guli\u00e8rement pour surveiller ou r\u00e9parer le petit transformateur capricieux qui alimente la r\u00e9gion en courant \u00e9lectrique. Il conna\u00eet le parfum craquant de la neige auquel se m\u00eale l’odeur du mazout r\u00e9pandue par les chemin\u00e9es d’aluminium et le silence, l’immense silence de ces parages sans voitures que les plaintes continues des chacals ne parviennent qu‘\u00e0 amplifier. L’ing\u00e9nieur Mohsen sait qu’il va mettre pr\u00e8s d’une heure pour parcourir les quarante kilom\u00e8tres qui le s\u00e9parent de la ville, au gr\u00e9 de routes \u00e9troites et mal d\u00e9neig\u00e9es o\u00f9 l’asphalte est inhabituel. L’ing\u00e9nieur Mohsen sait qu’il ne croisera pas un v\u00e9hicule, \u00e0 part peut-\u00eatre une moto ou un triporteur cahotant conduit par un moustachu emmitoufl\u00e9 dans un keffieh rouge. L’ing\u00e9nieur Mohsen prend son temps. Il attend patiemment que le moteur (et l’habitacle par la m\u00eame occasion) chauffe en buvant un verre de th\u00e9. Un vent glac\u00e9 s’est lev\u00e9. Il fera meilleur en bas. L’ing\u00e9nieur Mohsen enclenche la premi\u00e8re et commence sa descente.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Click here<\/a> for the whole thing.<\/p>\n

(Thanks to Jose Afonso Furtado<\/a> for bringing this to our attention.)<\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next fall we’ll be bringing out Zone, a 517-page, one-sentence book by Matias Enard that was all the rage in France last fall and, at least from the sample I’ve read, is utterly amazing. (Here’s a Chicago Tribune article about the book, and here’s a thoughtful review that ran at Quarterly Conversation.) We’ll have lots […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[26896,26886,1646,16966],"class_list":["post-273166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-le-monde","tag-matias-enard","tag-review","tag-zone"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":323396,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273166\/revisions\/323396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}