CATHERINE STEEL relishes a compelling novel about Augustus’s right hand man, but misses the politics, the cultural shifts, and more detail about his restoration of Rome
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Fictional bridge between East and West a resonant meditation on art and power
Islamic inspiration: 16th century Suleymaniye mosque interior, Istanbul
[Jose Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro/Creative Commons]
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Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants
by Mathias Enard
(Fitzcarraldo Editions, £10.99)
IN 1506 Michelangelo, then one of the most promising artists of his epoch, was invited by the Sultan of Constantinople to design a bridge over the Golden Horn. The historical record tells us that this invitation was rejected, but Mathias Enard's novel, exquisitely translated by Charlotte Mandell, imagines what would have happened if he had instead accepted.
Enard trades in the formalism of his previous fictions Zone and Compass for a more conventional historical novel, created from third-person narrative and the actual letters of Michelangelo. Instead of characteristic interior monologues and essayistic digressions, the reader is treated to a prose of elegant economy.
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