Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants

‘Compass is a book about boundaries and non-boundaries, smudged lines between countries, languages, cultures and times. Following this multi-directional flow is a pleasure, thanks in part to prose that – translated by Charlotte Mandell – buoys academic detours with aphorisms and scenes plush with emotional detail. … It is a book with ideas, but one that underpins its eruditeness with a sad, lovesick soul. For a novel overspilling with dead writers, Enard has created a story full of life, full of possibility for the oriental and occidental to find the self in the other.’

— Thomas McMullan, minor literature[s]