It’s a little to say that Mohamed’s fourth novel Mbougar Sarr was a favorite. In the stride, the jurors of the Renaudot award rewarded Amelie Nothomb, for “first blood”.
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The Goncourt Award was awarded to Mohamed Mbougar Sarr for the most secret memory of men (Philippe Rey / Jimsaan), Wednesday, November 3rd. After a 2020 edition, which had rewarded Hervé the Tellier (for the anomaly) by videoconference, it is again from the Drouant restaurant, in the 2 e district of Paris, that the jury announced the new . Also in the running: Christine Angot for the trip in the east (Flammarion), Sorj Chaladon for Children of Salaud (Grasset) and Louis-Philippe Dalembert for Milwaukee Blues (Sabine Wespieser Publisher).
In the same place, and in the stride, the jurors of the Renaudot Award have also made their choice known. He was on Amelie Nothomb, for the first blood.
It’s a little to say that Mohamed’s fourth novel Mbougar Sarr was a favorite: at this book selected for all autumn grand prizes (including the world), most literary reviews interviewed by books weekly a few days Before the vote predicted a coronation by the most coveted French literary distinctions.
An impressive ambition
His author, born in 1990 in Senegal, was not the most famous of the selection; Neither its two publishing houses (the Independent French Philippe Rey and Senegalese Jimsaan), regulars in the price race. No more than his text was the easiest way. But the impressive ambition and stunning narrative energy of the most secret memory of men take all over their way.
We do not advise you to ask the author: “It’s about what?” “This question embodies evil in literature,” said his narrator and double obvious, Diege Latye Faye, young Senegalese writer. This one goes on the footsteps of a novel published in 1938, the labyrinth of the inhuman, of a certain TC elimane, which made the latter a whore of the pre-war literary Paris, nicknamed “the Rimbaud Negro ” Before plagiarism charges result in the destruction of the book and the disappearance of Elimane.
“The indecent literature”
Over the search of Faye, the stories are flying, a narrator often caches another, we move between the continents (passing from France to Senegal, from Amsterdam to Argentina), the times and Literary genres (intimate newspaper, press extracts, interviews, stained fantasy narrative, learning novel …). Always, the Elimane figure escapes. Always, Diege Latyr Faye, supported by the mysterious writer Siga D., the one who put him the labyrinth of the inhuman in the hands, continues his meditation on the literature, his powers and his impasses (“literature; there was only remained. And would never remain only literature; the indecent literature, as a response, as a problem, as faith, like pride, as life “). Written in the shadow of Chilean Roberto Bolano (1953-2003), the most secret memory of men is certainly a very cerebral novel. But it is also vibrant of sensuality, certainly political – that it evokes the colonialist climate in France of the 1930s or the revolts in the contemporary Dakar – and often funny.
In particular when it evokes African’s African (or aspiring) circles living in Paris (“The Ghetto”) and the dream, fed by “a lot of us”, “the tenderness of the literary environment French (it’s always good, in his posture, mock and conchier). It’s our shame, but it’s also our fantasy glory; our servitude, and the poisonous illusion of our symbolic elevation “. It is not impossible that Mohamed Mbougar Sarr has redesigned these lines Bravaches when he learned that he was, at 31 years old, the laureate of the most prestigious French literary prices.