Street of Thieves

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Recipient of three French literary awards, Mathias Enard's follow-up to the critically acclaimed Zone is a timely novel about a young Moroccan boy caught up in the turbulent events of the Middle East, and a possible murder. 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 the backdrop of some of the most important events of the past few years: the violence and exciting eruption of the Arab Spring and the devastating collapse of Europe's economy.

Reviews

[Street of Thieves] confirms Enard as the most brazenly lapel-grabbing French writer since Michel Houellebecq.
Leo Robson, New Statesman

This is what the great contemporary French novel should be. Enard looks at the world as it is: poisoned by religion, poisoned by politics, choking on materialism and dying of globalization. His prose bites, and his characters retain our sympathy however extreme their actions. Enard fuses the traditions of Cline and Camus, but he is his own man.
Patrick McGuinness, author of The Last Hundred Days

Though his journeys are limited to Morocco, Tunisia and Spain, [Lakhdar's journeys] provide a glimpse into the tremors of the Arab spring, the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, and the indignados movement in Spain. ... Enard is an ambitious writer and his prose, in Charlotte Mandells translation, has moments of devastating clarity.
Laila Lailami, Guardian

A remarkable and important novel. I cant think of any better contemporary writers than Enard.
Thom Cuell, Bookmunch

Street of Thieves is a feat of the imagination propelled by deep cultural familiarity and experience, an extraordinary animation of another person ... Ill read everything Enard writes from now on.
Lee Klein, 3:AM Magazine

Street of Thieves represents the kind of fiction one hopes will emerge, from Enard or others, after the tumult once known as the Arab Spring has receded a little further into the past.
Robert F. Worth, New York Times

Set against a backdrop of rising Islamic extremism, the Arab Spring, and the Occupy movement, Enards latest novel is a howling elegy for thwarted youth.
Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Mathias Enard studied Persian and Arabic and spent long periods in the Middle East. A professor of Arabic at the University of Barcelona, he won the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie and the Prix Edmee de la Rochefoucault for his first novel, La perfection du tir. He has been awarded many prizes for Zone, including the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Decembre.