A Profound Search for the Sublime

In The Most Secret Memory of Men, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr takes us on a literary journey that questions what it means to be an African writer today.

When The Most Secret Memory of Men was published in France in 2021, it broke boundaries in African literature. The novel won its author, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, the most prestigious prize in French Literature, the Prix Goncourt—the first by an African writer from a region south of the Sahara. A new English translation of the novel by Lara Vergnaud, published in the United Kingdom in 2024, highlights its significance to a broader audience.

The Most Secret Memory of Men begins with a diary entry of Diégane Latyr Faye, the narrator, in Amsterdam. ‘I’m leaving Amsterdam. Despite everything I’ve learnt in this city, I still can’t decide if I know Elimane any better or if his mystique has merely grown.’ As the novel progresses, we learn how Diégane came to find out about T. C. Elimane and his only published book when he was in his junior year at a military boarding school in northern Senegal.

Diégane had written his first novel, Anatomy of the Void, which was not as well received as he hoped and in the process of seeking to write his own masterpiece, he escapes into the streets of Paris after failing to think of a single sentence. It is here that he meets, by chance, Marème Siga D., a Senegalese writer in her sixties...