Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants
Description
In 1506, Michelangelo--a young but already renowned sculptor--is invited by the Sultan of Constantinople to design a bridge over the Golden Horn. The sultan has offered, alongside an enormous payment, the promise of immortality, since Leonardo da Vinci's design had been rejected: "You will surpass him in glory if you accept, for you will succeed where he has failed, and you will give the world a monument without equal."
Michelangelo, after some hesitation, flees Rome and an irritated Pope Julius II--whose commission he leaves unfinished--and arrives in Constantinople for this truly epic project. Once there, he explores the beauty and wonder of the Ottoman Empire, sketching and describing his impressions along the way, and becomes immersed in cloak-and-dagger palace intrigues as he struggles to create what could be his greatest architectural masterwork.
Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants--constructed from real historical fragments--is a story about why stories are told, why bridges are built, and how seemingly unmatched pieces, seen from the opposite sides of civilization, can mirror one another.
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About the Author
Reviews
Énard fuses recollection and scholarly digression into a swirling, hypnotic, stream-of-consciousness narration.--Sam Sacks
No one else writes like Mathias Énard.--Francine Prose
In his fiction, Énard is constructing an intricate, history-rich vision of a persistently misunderstood part of the world--mesmerizing.--Jacob Silverman
Continues Énard's deep, humanistic explorations of the historical and ongoing connections between Europe and Asia, Islamdom and Christendom.-- (07/17/2018)
A historical novel of exquisite beauty.-- (09/17/2018)
Énard packs a feast for the senses into this short book.--Boyd Tonkin (11/09/2018)
Too interesting to pass up.-- (11/01/2018)
Énard weaves an imaginative and suspenseful tale of civilizations and personalities clashing, of love, of being an artist in a violent era.--Juan Vidal (12/02/2018)
In this charming little reverie of a book, inspiration springs from our unguarded confrontations with the unfamiliar.--Sam Sacks (11/30/2018)
Mathias Énard weaves tantalizing facts and fragments into the tapestry of a slender historical novel.
There is a lush materiality to Énard's prose, thick and smooth, so that following the artist's expeditions through Ottoman opium dens feels nearly as immersive as being in them.
Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants (deftly translated, like Énard's three previous English releases, by Charlotte Mandell) is a tale of bastard genius that might have been, and a cautionary fable about the consequences of parochial timidity.--Julian Lucas "When Michelangelo Went to Constantinople "
The story of Il Maestro's invitation from the sultan to design a bridge over the Golden Horn is beautifully wrought in its simplicity--credit must go to Charlotte Mandell's translation--with a perfectly paced narrative that reaches a dramatic denouement...Enard's taut prose carries the reader swiftly and satisfyingly through chapters (which are more like fragments, really) to the extent that one does not wish for the tale to end.
If all you have is a bridge, then everything begins to look like a chasm; the incessant drive to overcome all differences has, unsurprisingly, created more division. Énard's radical suggestion has been, instead, to think about who is being connected to whom, and what is being bypassed along the way.-- (01/22/2019)
Even as the tragedies of history are spoken, the listeners are asleep. And yet, Énard remains optimistic, his novels a powerful reminder that the possibility for connection remains.--Isaac Zisman
