La plus secrète mémoire des hommes

"My first recommendation is an echo of the biggest news in French literature. It’s been impossible to ignore this book since the announcement of Sarr’s Prix Goncourt win last autumn . That was the first time the Prix Goncourt has been awarded to an author from Sub-Saharan Africa, and his book has been unanimously praised by critics. It’s a double odyssey. First that of the hero, Diégane, a young writer who decides to go in search of T.C. Elimane, the ‘black Rimbaud,’ a flamboyant first-time novelist whom an imputation of plagiarism drove from glory to oblivion. Then that of the real Senegalese author, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, who dives deep into the currents and eddies of French literature to pay tribute to the Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem, a young star who received the Renaudot prize in 1968 for Le devoir de violence (translated as ‘Bound to Violence’ by Ralph Manheim in 1971), and then disappeared from the literary scene after being accused of plagiarism . An English translation is forthcoming from Other Press , and rumour has it Ouologuem’s novel may soon be reedited, too."