Unlike the visual arts, sound produces effects that persist long after it has stopped. The body, Nancy says, is itself like an echo chamber, responding to music by inner vibrations as well as outer attentiveness. Since "the ear has no eyelid" (Quignard),...

"The novel of the decade, if not of the century."--Christophe Claro

Francis Servain Mirkovic, a French-born Croat who has been working for the French Intelligence Services for fifteen years, is traveling by train from Milan to Rome. He's carrying a briefcase whose contents he's selling to a representative from the Vatican; the briefcase contains a wealth of information about the violent history of the Zone--the lands of the Mediterranean basin, Spain, Algeria, Lebanon, Italy, that have become Mirkovic's specialty.

Over the course of a single night, Mirkovic visits the sites of...

"A tremendous accomplishment. . . . Enard's Zone is, in short, one of the best books of the year"--Daily Beast

Exiled from his family for religious transgressions related to his feelings for his cousin, Lakhdar finds himself on the streets of Barcelona hiding from both the police and the Muslim Group for the Propagation of Koranic Thoughts, a group he worked for in Tangier not long after being thrown out on the streets by his father.

Lakhdar's transformations--from a boy into a man, from a devout Muslim into a sinner--take place against some of the most important events...