Melancholy of the Endlands: North - Mathias Enard

Melancholy of the Confines: North

“Everything that enters literature crosses the confines of the world of ghosts and, upon entering the universe of language, abandons its carnal shell. The world of the text is a specter, projected by a magician's apprentice onto the whiteness of our consciousnesses.”

Upon leaving the Beelitz clinic, where he visited a dear friend suffering from a stroke, the author transforms his melancholy into a walk, both to warm himself and to ward off the sadness that afflicts him. As the early, rainy night of Berlin autumn falls, Mathias Enard walks through the city and its history. As in a somewhat Dantean inner conversation, his spirit wanders, delves into time and geography, examines the multifaceted notion of borders, of limits… and discovers clearings, melancholic hope everywhere: in his memories, in his readings or in his active practice of friendship – which is never far from his experience of literature. North is the first volume of this Melancholy of the Confines in four seasons, in which, before our eyes, Mathias Enard draws his personal atlas, an intimate cartography of a world made of hyperlinks, tirelessly explored. And once again, he finds the right tone to celebrate encounters and diversity.

Work details

• Author: Mathias Enard
• Publisher: Dom Quixote
• Category: Translated Literature
• Number of pages: 240
• Cover: Paperback