Sponsored by the Loewe Foundation in collaboration with Granta en español magazine
Mathias Énard begins his residency at the Prado MuseumWednesday, November 12, 2025
Mathias Énard, winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt for Compass, will make the Prado his centre of activity for six weeks, undertaking a creative process that will result in a new work about the Museum and the expressive links between fiction and the visual arts. The piece will subsequently be published in the programme’s collection of books.
As part of Writing the Prado – the International Literary Residency sponsored by the Loewe Foundation at the Prado Museum – there will also be a public conversation between Mathias Énard and journalist José Andrés Rojo focusing on his writing, his relationship with art, and how the dialogue between art and literature informs his literary work.
This conversation will take place on 4th December at 6.30 p.m. in the Prado’s auditorium. Tickets may be collected free of charge from the Museum’s Ticket Office 1 on the day of the event, from 6 p.m. onwards.
Mathias Énard in the Prado Museum. Courtesy: the LOEWE Foundation. Photograph: Silvana Trevale
Seeking to foster excellence in artistic creation while inspiring experimentation and dialogue between the creative languages of literature and the visual arts, the Museum temporarily hosts writers at work through the Writing the Prado programme, sponsored by the Loewe Foundation. Every year since 2023, the Prado Museum invites two internationally renowned writers to take up residencies lasting from three weeks to two months. During their stay, the writers are given a workspace and access to the Museum’s workshops, library, collection galleries, and areas reserved for its professional teams. This allows them to be in daily contact with curators, conservators, technicians, managers, administrators, and other staff, and of course, with visitors.
Mathias Énard now joins this literary residency programme, which has already welcomed John M. Coetzee, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature, in the summer of 2023; Mexican writer Chloe Aridjis in the autumn of 2023; Polish author and 2018 Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk in April 2024; Irish novelist John Banville in the autumn of 2024; and Helen Oyeyemi, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and the PEN Open Book Award, in the spring of this year.
Mathias Énard (France, 1972) studied Arabic and Persian and spent extended periods in the Middle East until 2000, when he settled Barcelona, where he collaborated with various cultural magazines, including the now-defunct Lateral. He is a member of the editorial board of Inculte magazine in Paris and was appointed writer-in-residence at the prestigious French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici in 2005. Énard has also taught Arabic at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
He is the author of La Perfection du tir (2003), Remonter l’Orénoque (2005), Bréviaire des artificiers (2007), L'alcool et la nostalgie (2011), Zone (2014), Street of Thieves (2014), Compass (2017), Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants (2018), and The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild (2024).
Énard has received numerous awards, including the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie (2004), the Prix Décembre, the Prix du Livre Inter, the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens (2010), and the Prix Goncourt (2015) for Compass.
