Mathias Énard
Street of Thieves
Exiled from his family for religious transgressions related to his feelings for his cousin, Lakhdar finds himself on the streets of Barcelona hiding from both the police and the Muslim Group for the Propagation of Koranic Thoughts, a group he worked for in Tangier not long after being thrown out on the streets by his father.
Lakhdar's transformationsfrom a boy into a man, from a devout Muslim into a sinnertake place against some of the most important events of the past few years: the violence and exciting eruption of the Arab Spring and the devastating collapse of Europe's economy.
If all of that isn't enough, Lakhdar reunites with a childhood friendone who is planning an assassination, a murder Lakhdar opposes. A finalist for the prestigious Prix Goncourt, Street of Thieves solidifies Énard's place as one of France's most ambitious and keyed-in contemporary novelists. This book may even suprpass Énard's earlier work, Zone, which Christophe Claro boldly declared to be "the novel of the decade, if not of the century."