Used book – Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants - PRIX GONCOURT DES LYCEENS 2010, Mathias Enard

When Michelangelo disembarked in Constantinople on May 13, 1506, he knew he was defying the power and wrath of Julius II, a warrior pope and bad payer, whose tomb he had left unfinished in Rome. But how could he not respond to the invitation of Sultan Bayezid, who—after rejecting Leonardo da Vinci's plans—offered him the opportunity to design a bridge over the Golden Horn?

Thus begins this novel, full of historical allusions, which seizes upon a real event to unravel the mysteries of this journey.

As unsettling as the encounter between the man of the Renaissance and the beauties of the Ottoman world, as precise and finely crafted as a piece of goldsmithery, this portrait of the artist at work is also a fascinating reflection on the act of creation and on the symbol of an unfinished gesture towards the other shore of civilization.

For through the chronicle of these few weeks forgotten by history, Mathias Énard sketches a political geography whose hesitations are still just as palpable five centuries later.

9782742793624