Compass () is a novel by the French writer Mathias ÃÂnard, published in 2015.
The book received the Prix Goncourt.
During a sleepless night in Vienna, the musicologist Franz Ritter looks back on his life, his university career, his stays in the Orient, and his love, Sarah.
Writing in Le Monde, Raphaëlle Leyris remarked that if ÃÂnard's earlier novel Zone was a book of violence and hate, Compass may be the antidote with the taste of the unknown and curiosity for the other at its heart. described Compass as an âÂÂintimate and effusive encyclopedia disguised as a novelâÂÂ. He went on to make reference to Enard's erudition and background as an orientalist.
In a piece on Orientalism published in the New York Review of Books, Adam Shatz argued that with Compass Enard had failed to âÂÂtranscend the oppressive nature of Orientalism, via paradoxically, the Orientalist tradition itselfâÂÂ. The novel has also been described in the press as a âÂÂmasterful novelâ that recognises the contribution of Islamic and Middle Eastern cultures to the canon, âÂÂlyrically and intellectually richâÂÂ, and a âÂÂpowerful workâ that also threatens to send the reader to sleep with its level of detail.