Perfecting the shot

By: Énard, Mathias

Published by New Directions Paperbook Original, 2026-09-29

"In an unnamed city completely torn apart by civil war, a teenage sniper has only one goal: to fire the perfect shot. He sublimates himself into his weapon, controls his breath, stays serenely calm, and listens to his body and the beat of his heart. Lying in wait on rooftops, he shoots down at enemy combatants while his mentally ill mother cowers in their apartment. But the violence eats away at any sense of morality, and he begins to kill indiscriminately for the sake of killing itself. His routine is eventually disrupted by the arrival of Myrna, a fifteen-year-old girl hired to care for his mother, and his increasingly disturbing obsession with Myrna threatens to push them all over the brink. This unrelent- ing book, whose harrowing urgency belies its piercing lyricism, exposes the disastrous effects of extreme violence on any society"-- Provided by publisher.