La plus secrète mémoire des hommes

Prix Goncourt 2021. A labyrinthine novel and literary investigation, La plus secrète mémoire des hommes follows Diégane Latyr Faye, a young Senegalese writer living in Paris, as he pursues the trail of a mythical 1938 book, Le Labyrinthe de l’inhumain, and its vanished author, T. C. Elimane — a fictional double. As the investigation branches out across Paris, Dakar, Amsterdam and Buenos Aires, Sarr composes a nested novel blending memory and lineage, exile and literary brotherhood, myth and archive, in a polyphony that partakes of fable, initiation narrative and a love letter to literature.

Awarded at Drouant on the first ballot — a return to ritual after the 2020 edition held by videoconference — Sarr became, at thirty-one, the youngest laureate since 1976 and the first author from sub-Saharan Africa to win the Prix Goncourt, a remarkable feat given that the book was co-published by Philippe Rey in France and Jimsaan in Senegal.