Zone

Book Review: A Zone united by infinite sorrow - Mathias Énard’s take on the legacy of bloodshed in and around the Mediterranean

Our business in the field of fight is not to question, but to prove our might.

-Homer, the Iliad

Whilst the unrest in North Africa and the Middle East continues, social scientists and journalists keep on writing their first article drafts and chapters on those significant events. Indeed, the Arab Spring has become the conscience of the world. Soon there will be even more reports, blogs and tweets influencing public opinion and steering the discussions on the future of the volatile region. Maybe the newfound faith in liberal ideas will reignite the familiar debates about history’s end after the Cold War. The fall of the House of Mubarak, the Jasmine Revolution and the uprising against Qaddafi have shaken up the view that there is an inherent Arab or Muslim inclination to autocracy. But the belief in progress can always be shattered. The unclear standoff in Libya is just one concrete situation where the scales of fate swing between persistent hope and utter despair. 

Literature and fiction have always been dealing with human nature and the ambiguities of politics. Bearing in mind the upheavals of today, one should go two years back, when a French book had kept Europe’s feuilletons busy. The English translation is out now and could be read as a huge footnote to the current geopolitical wind of change. The young author Mathias Énard has written the last decades’ answer to the Iliad; a reflective tale of violence and tragedy set in present day Europe, encompassing everything you ever wanted to know about the history of warfare in the Mediterranean Basin, the titular Zone. 

The novel takes almost exclusively place in the head of a former French-Croat mercenary turned secret agent, who is travelling from Milan to Rome, carrying a suitcase with classified information about murders, false identities, massacres, collaborations and other shady materials. Francis Mirković, this anti-hero of the highly acclaimed novel, ponders upon his past and present and speculates about a possible future for a broken soul like him. The only way out: Selling the data to the Vatican, forgetting the yesteryear and starting a new life – somewhere.

Zone consists of anecdotic episodes, encyclopedic facts, essayistic excursions and even heartbreaking moments. It is written in just one ceaseless sentence from start to finish - yet it is still sufficiently arranged by punctuation. The novel is not about Francis’ journey but rather his thoughts; the architecture of a tormented mind. 

The reader gets a crash course on the history of violence starting with the Trojan War and ending with Guantanamo. In the course of over 500 pages one will look at the Mediterranean as an area which was baptized in fire and whose legacy still haunts and influences the Europe of today. Through the lens of Mirković, we are introduced to the Hobbesian idea that all history is a sequence of bloodbaths and that political conflict is in fact the root of many present-day challenges, whether it is illegal migration or the everlasting stalemate in the Holy Land.

The writer’s eloquence manifests itself through a variety of stylistic moves. At one point he masks as Scheherazade, weaving countless plots and counterplots together and then dissolving and reuniting them again with the ease of a gifted storyteller. After that he becomes a latter-day Homer, constructing deep lyrical passages through an accomplished usage of metaphors - only to be transformed later into something like literature’s Tarantino: using grotesque imagery and grim humor to underline the bizarre ways of war. 

Énard seems to strive towards the novelization of cinematic outputs such as Waltz with Bashir or No Man’s Land. Free of idealism, his portrayal of century-old carnage must appear as a surreal nightmare to the modern European or American reader without much recollection of war. Of course one can declare that Iraq and Afghanistan are our Vietnam; and recalling the victims of 9/11, the London bombings and other terrorist attacks may convince us that we are in a clear and present danger. But most people in the West merely watch hostilities on TV. Their Zone is the one of comfort; and it remains the task of books to bite the jovial reader, to create a readiness of mind to pick up the dirty bits, the trash-cans of history. 

The novel is a paradox since it manages to take the state of peace – a hero reflecting and musing during a voyage - and corrupt it (via recollections and memories) by almost all atrocities humanity had to endure in its ascent. Surprisingly, all these memories do add up to a very coherent and thrilling narrative. The endless sentence flies as time’s arrow and at the end, we are both impressed and partially scared of what is yet to come not only in the region but the whole world. Énard has navigated us through the story with stops in Cairo, Beirut, Algiers and many other places. With the benefit of hindsight, we know what happens there just today. How are we able to read of torture, executions and strife without bearing in mind the revolutionary events of early 2011; the protests in Tahrir Square and the Libyan uprising? 

Sometimes, fact becomes fiction. Then again, imagination turns out to be a more credible account of politics than a claim for objective truth. At one point, we read in Zone that Beirut isn’t actually haunted by a memory and loss, but rather a “dance of oblivion that only state-controlled memory allows.” In search of destiny in an absurd world, everything could be thus permitted. Such are the thoughts of Francis Mirković and who in the world would assert that this phrase has not spooked or poisoned his or her thoughts?

This pessimism is just one lesson we may draw from the novel. In addition to the actual content, there are many unwritten and hidden lines of melancholy along with the author’s inherent admiration of the area between Gibraltar and the Levant. The fictitious world of the Zone brings out civilization's dark side. But the greyish reality of the Mediterranean is not 100% adequately described by Énard's impressive, yet at times too apocalyptic prose. 

It isn’t just a graveyard, or how a Serbian poet has put it, a ‘blue tomb’. This Sea has harboured countless treasures; historians, political scientists and writers shouldn’t forget to remember this diverse legacy. Isn’t it a mosaic, a maritime fresco of fluctuation;  spanning a scope from the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World over the stunning spheres of Al-Andalus to the humanistic accomplishments born in the Renaissance era? Not only butchers and criminals, but also seafarers, merchants and explorers crossed the shores of this space. 

Yes, it may be filled with blood and tears. But lovers’ voices and friendship’s laughter still cause an echo which rectifies the gloomy notion that the Med is a vessel of sorrow.  

Zone is as much an (anti)-war novel as Full Metal Jacket is an (anti)-war movie. To measure it with the ordinary tools of a critic would mean to neglect the opportunity of going down the rabbit hole. Énard even presents a zone within the zone when Francis is reading a book by a (non-existent) writer about the Lebanese Civil War. This isn’t only a postmodern trick, since the subject of this episode is not a senseless massacre but rather love; albeit in its dark and doleful shape. 

In addition, the book contains an unequivocal warning against fascism. The author’s residence is Barcelona, a republican stronghold during the Spanish Civil War and later target of General Franco’s revenge. But ironically, Mirković is musing for a long time about the fascist cult hero Millan Astray, especially in the beginning of the novel, when he is reminded of this Spanish military leader by the very city where he starts his journey – Milan. The will to power and the will to serve and die for a cause are omnipresent ideas which always float over Francis’ actions and beliefs, and implicitly guide Zone’s other relevant passages.

The young boy has a state-legitimized torturer as father, a fanatic nationalist as mother, a full-blown fascist as best friend and a war criminal as hero. The adolescent has grown to serve and to kill. And the grown-up we see is nothing short of a monster…but he is our monster, from Milan to Roma, and he is our guide from the times of Achilles to Operation Enduring Freedom. We ponder about Guantanamo with his mind, we watch him debating morals and ethics of freedom fighters and we feel his unconscious desire for redemption. 

We may not be able to fully understand, let alone forgive him. But we also feel certain empathy, maybe even sympathy, since Énard directs his writing not only at persons and events but looks at the bigger picture where the book’s ostensive amorality actually comes from. The true gem of Zone is the novel’s vicinity to the type of thinking which ties isolated episodes into a more structural framework. Mirković is a character but he is also a symbol; a symbol for the thousands of young, angry men who have stirred up world history for ages. His ambience is the spatial time of the Mediterranean, an endlessly flowing stream of consciousness.

The reader is able to think of this history as a faceless and indifferent force, yet Mirković takes its parsimony or plenty as somehow planned, implicitly blaming fate for his life and still bravely accepting this verdict. Moreover, the novel leaves a certain tolerance for free will and the possibility of a choice. Some scenes suggest that nothing has to remain exactly as it is. And the reality in the Maghreb proves the writer of fiction right. Or at least, change lies within the realms of the possible. Exit Francis, the man who still loves a woman and who is not blindly following force anymore.  

This book is raising important questions about violence and the origins of conflict. But it doesn’t seek to proselytize. For the answers, look into your own zone. And think about it next time you see a revolt live on TV, because every revolution and every peace treaty are in the end, nothing more than some forking paths in a garden.