The novel by Mathias ENAR "Compass" (2015), which brought the Goncourt prize to the writer - like a magic carpet floating freely over Vienna and Istanbul, Paris and Baghdad-opens the East to us, intoxicating, fascinating, fragrant, which has long attracted European artists, composers, poets. All this volume's epic novel within the framework of one sleepless night, a night of memories and of real danger, because the main characters of the book the melancholy of Franz and the beautiful Sarah is no stranger to other East: disturbing, stained with the blood of old wars and bombings of the current religious conflicts. These Cabinet researchers, talking about Debussy and Bartock, Nizami and Hugo, beckon distant wanderings, the arrow of their compass persistently points to the East, but whether they are destined to coincide at one point of the vast space or the Arabic script of their destinies will not merge into a single text?..