Like the Booker, the Prix Goncourt’s laureates now tend to veer between diamonds and duds. One of the strongest recent novels to take France’s premier book award was, in 2021, The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, from Senegal. Almost a West African Possession, it sent its narrator on a quest for a cult writer named T.C. Elimane – inspired by the Malian novelist Yambo Ouologuem – who had vanished after claims of plagiarism shredded his reputation. A combination of mystery, satire and cultural inquiry, it spotlit the fate of African authors who are lionised and then forsaken by the Parisian literary elite.
The Goncourt coup has prompted English-language publishers to revisit Sarr’s backlist. Pure Men first appeared in French (De purs hommes) in 2018 as his third book, and shows Sarr the taboo-trasher at his most outspoken. It tackles violent, rampant homophobia in Senegal with little mercy – though plenty of insight – for its perpetrators and furious compassion for its victims. Gay men, or other sexual heretics, are ‘pure men, because at any moment human folly can kill them’ and gather them into the ‘fraternity of violence’ that defines our hate-driven species.
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