Boussole, by Mathias Enard

A very good book, beautifully written, poetically informative about the East and its cultural relations with the West. Extremely knowledgeable, full of lots of anecdotes about European orientalists, all very interesting and captivating to someone, like me, that has dreamt about the East and its interactions with our own culture. And, apart from its love story, it's a good way to remind us how East and West are so interrelated in many complex ways, how the Oriental is a cultural construct, and how we fundamentally are all the same.