Towards a common library: A conversation with Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

When Mohamed Mbougar Sarr won the Prix Goncourt in 2021 for his novel La plus secrete mémoire des hommes (Philippe Rey & Jimsaan), fiction turned into fact. Just as the text critiques the Parisian literary marketplace, which bestows accolades from its dominant place in a universalist Republic of Letters (Casanova), so the author joined a tradition of racialized francophone writers whose texts are read through the identitarian politics of reception. Critics not only drew parallels with René Maran’s novel Batouala (1921), crowned by the Goncourt a century prior, but also with the institutional recognition of Aimé Césaire, Dany Laferrière or Alain Mabanckou who ‘confirment de manière spectaculaire le redéploiement de la figure du grand écrivain noir au profit de la République’ (Achille and Moudileno).

Across four novels, a short story, and numerous essays, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr critiques this ‘mythologie francophone’ by reflecting on the twin violence of assimilation and alterity. From tackling religious fundamentalism in his first novel Terre ceinte (Présence Africaine, 2015), to a saga about asylum and migration in Silence du chœur (Présence Africaine, 2017), Mbougar Sarr frames literature as a polyphonic space of encounter. Marginalized voices confront what Patrick Chamoiseau dubs the ‘“Grand récit” of ‘la “Civilisation”, l’ “Universel”, le “Progrès”, le “Développement”, la “Modernisation”, les “Droits de l’Homme”’.

Inspired by Chamoiseau’s latest tract, Que peut Littérature quand elle ne peut? (Éditions du Seuil, 2025), this discussion explores how literature recreates how we read. If, as Chamoiseau tells us, ‘Lire compose L’Écrire où vient s’ouvrir le Lire’, then Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s metatextual reflections on literary history generate a trans or counter-relational poetics that find new ways to read beyond national canons.

Our discussion will explore:

• The role of the publishing house, Présence Africaine, in challenging monolithic notions of literary history and canon-formation. Originally a journal and hub of anticolonial movements, its founding premise was to ‘move past the confines of the French civilization’ and consider ‘Europe’s relations with the rest of the world’ (Diop, 1947: 190). Now a thriving bookshop with a roster of 400 authors, it has culturally renegotiated the French literary marketplace.

• The writer as reader: Mbougar Sarr’s texts question the geo-cultural and epistemic boundaries that shape literature’s imagination and creative practice. Exploring the writer as reader, we consider the possibility of a common library of literature in French (Panaïté).

This event will take place in French, with simultaneous interpretation into English, and is generously supported by the University of London Cassal Endowment Fund.

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr was born in Dakar in 1990. He studied literature and philosophy at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Terre ceinte (), his first novel, won the Grand Prix du Roman Métis, the Prix Ahmadou Kourouma, and the French Voices Grand Prize. Silence du chœur () won the Prix littérature-monde 2018 and the Prix littéraire de la Porte Dorée 2018. His novel La Plus secrète mémoire des hommes () was awarded France’s Prix Goncourt in 2021 and is an international phenomenon, selling more than half a million copies in France and translated into more than thirty languages.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

University of London Institute in Paris, 9 -11 Rue de Constantine, Paris, France