Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, winner of the Goncourt Prize 2021, comes to Bucharest

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Senegalese writer awarded in 2021 with the prestigious Goncourt Prize for The Most Secret Memory of Men, is invited to Bucharest for the launch of the Romanian edition of the novel published in the Anansi collection. World Fiction from the Pandora M Publishing House, translated by the writer O. Nimigean. The launch, followed by an autograph session, will take place on Wednesday, March 15, at 6 p.m., in the Atrium Hall of the French Institute (Dacia Boulevard no. 77). The event will be a dialogue between Mohamed Mbougar Sarr and the poet Svetlana Cârstean and is held in partnership with the French Institute in Bucharest, the University Agency of Francophonie and the Kyralina Bookstore.

Published by Pandora M Publishing in the Anansi collection. World Fiction last year, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s novel was one of the titles enthusiastically received by the cultural press in both Romania and France: “an exceptional novel to (re)read!” (Observator Cultural), “a narrative construction without a crack, a novel written as if for life and death” (Alecart), “a declaration of love for literature” (Lire), “a great book, a jewel of literary mastery that delights you, overwhelms you, follows you” ( L’ Express), “a passionate and confusing passage through a mosaic of testimonies, accounts and documents, which is also an initiatory novel” (Libération).

The Most Secret Memory of Men tells the story of Diégane Latyr Faye, a young Senegalese writer who, in 2018, discovers in Paris a mythical book, published in 1938, The Labyrinth of the Inhuman. The story, described as a reflection on the links between fiction and reality, is an echo of the real experience of the Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem, who in 1968 became the first African winner of another famous French literary prize, the Prix Renaudot, but who was later accused of plagiarism, fled France and disappeared from public life.

“I am part of a great tradition of people who, both in the West and on the continent, never abandoned the Malian writer Yambo Ouologouem, never wanted to forget him and who, over the decades, – they dedicated tributes in various forms”, declared Mohamed Mbougar Sarr immediately after the publication of the novel.

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, born in 1990 in Senegal, completed his military studies at the prestigious Prytanée Militaire de Saint-Louis in Senegal. After moving to France, he is admitted to the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), where he studies literature and philosophy.

Noted in 2014 after the publication of his first short story, La Cale, for which he received the Stéphane-Hessel Prize for Young Francophone Writers, he came to the limelight in 2015 with Terre ceinte (Brotherhood), his first novel, which won him the Ahmadou Prize -Kourouma and then the Grand Prix du roman métis.

In 2018 he becomes the youngest writer ever awarded the Prix Littérature-Monde, for Silence du choeur (Silence of the Choir). De purs hommes (About pure men) is his third novel followed, in 2021, by The Most Secret Memory of Men, which will bring him the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Transfuge for the best French-language novel in the same year from 2021.

Currently, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr lives in Beauvais.