Perfecting the Shot

In a city torn apart by civil war, a teenage sniper has only one to fire the perfect shot. He sublimates himself into his weapon, practices controlling his breath, staying calm, listening to his body and the beat of his heart. Consumed for too long by violence and turned agent of pure destruction and despair, he lies in wait on rooftops, killing civilians while his mentally ill mother cowers in their flat. His routine is disrupted by the arrival of Myrna, a fifteen-year-old girl hired to care for her, and towards whom he develops a disturbing obsession in which she finds herself trapped. Now published in English for the first time, Mathias Enard's debut novel is an unrelenting work whose harrowing immediacy belies its lyricism, exposing how extreme violence corrodes the soul and leaves no part of life unscathed.