Wednesday, 7:00 pm EDT February 14, 2024
The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed
We regret to inform you that Mathias Énard’s U.S. tour has been canceled until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your understanding.
The Center for Fiction welcomes Mathias Énard (Compass), winner of the Prix Goncourt, to the stage for a discussion on his long awaited new novel: The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild. In Énard’s erudite and earthy story, an anthropology student settles in a village in the marshlands of western France, determined to understand the essence of the local culture. What he doesn’t know is that once a year, in this seemingly ordinary place, Death and the living observe a temporary truce during a gargantuan three-day feast where gravediggers gorge themselves on food, drink, and language. Author and critic Merve Emre (The Personality Brokers) joins Mathias in conversation about his riotous novel of life, death, and love. After the conversation, Énard will sign books.
“This event is a part of Villa Albertine’s Authors on Tour program. Mathias Enard’s 2024 US tour is made possible by Villa Albertine and New Directions”.
In Conversation
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Mathias Énard
Mathias Énard
Mathias Énard is the author of Compass (winner of the Prix Goncourt, the Leipzig Prize, and the Premio von Rezzori, and shortlisted for the Booker International Prize), Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants, Zone, Street of Thieves, and The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild.
Photo Credit: Marc Melki
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Merve Emre
Merve Emre
Merve Emre is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University and a contributing writer at the New Yorker.
Featured Book
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The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild
By Mathias Énard
Published by New Directions Publishing
Translated by Frank Wynne
To research his thesis on contemporary agrarian life, anthropology student David Mazon moves from Paris to La Pierre-Saint-Christophe, a village in the marshlands of western France. Determined to understand the essence of the local culture, the intrepid young scholar scurries around restlessly on his moped to interview residents.
But what David doesn’t yet know is that here, in this seemingly ordinary place, once the stage for wars and revolutions, Death leads a dance: when one thing perishes, the Wheel of Life recycles its soul and hurls it back into the world as microbe, human, or wild animal, sometimes in the past, sometimes in the future. And once a year, Death and the living observe a temporary truce during a gargantuan three-day feast where gravediggers gorge themselves on food, drink, and language.
Brimming with Mathias Énard’s characteristic wit and encyclopedic brilliance, The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild is a riotous novel where the edges between past and present are constantly dissolving against a Rabelaisian backdrop of excess.