(Paris) A young writer unknown to the general public and a sales star: Senegalese Mohamed Mbougar Sarr won the Goncourt on Wednesday, with The most secret memory of men, and the Belgian Amélie Nothomb the Renaudot prize for First blood.
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr becomes the first writer from sub-Saharan Africa to be honored with the most prestigious French literary prize. He is also, at 31, one of the youngest laureates.
Senegalese President Macky Sall welcomed this award, on Twitter, seeing it as a “beautiful consecration which illustrates the tradition of excellence of the men and women of Senegalese letters”.
Like Amélie Nothomb for the Renaudot, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr was a favorite, designated as such by the literary journalists interviewed by the review Weekly Books.
He won in the first round, with six votes out of the ten on the jury. “I feel a lot of joy. Quite simply, ”he told the press. “There is no age in literature. You can arrive very young, or at 67, at 30, at 70 and yet be very old ”.
“Indescribable”
PHOTO LEWIS JOLY, ASSOCIATED PRESS
“I feel a lot of joy. Quite simply, ”he told the press. “There is no age in literature. You can arrive very young, or at 67, at 30, at 70 and yet be very old ”.
“With this young author, we returned to the fundamentals of the Goncourt testament. 31 years old, a few books in front of him. Hopefully Goncourt will not cut off his desire to continue, ”said the secretary of the Academy, Philippe Claudel.
Other voices went to the French Sorj Chalandon for Bastard child and Haitian Louis-Philippe Dalembert for Milwaukee Blues.
None focused on Christine Angot with The trip to the east, who had won the Medici Prize the week before, compromising his chances.
After a 2020 edition by videoconference, the Goncourt was handed over, as tradition dictates, to the Drouant restaurant, in the Opéra district in Paris.
Its president, Didier Decoin, who had not hidden his admiration for the novel by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, hailed a “very beautiful book” and a “hymn to literature”. “What I love about literature is when it opens its windows. I read it all at once, ”he said.
This Goncourt was a confrontation between two powerful publishers, accustomed to rewards, Grasset (Hachette group) and Flammarion (Madrigall group), and two small independents, novices in this field.
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr and Louis-Philippe Dalembert have in common that they are defended by a house that bears the name of the person who founded it and still manages it.
“For a publisher of my size, a small publisher which has less than 20 years of existence, it is an extraordinary happiness, it is really something indescribable”, rejoiced Philippe Rey, the editor of the winner, at AFPTV.
10 euro check
The Goncourt Prize, awarded by a jury of seven men and three women, earns a check for 10 euros ($ 14.40), but it guarantees sales in the hundreds of thousands of copies.
The coronation in 2020 of The anomaly, a whimsical novel by Hervé Le Tellier, had generated in bookstores a craze never seen since The lover by Marguerite Duras in 1984, with more than a million copies sold.
This year, the themes were more serious: incest with Christine Angot, the mythomania of a father engaged with the Nazis with Sorj Chalandon, racism and police violence with Louis-Philippe Dalembert … and the difficulty of African literature in be recognized by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr.
On the Renaudot side, three other books were finalists: Postcard by Anne Berest (Grasset), Dark Murnau by Nicolas Chemla (Recherches-Midi) and Etampes’ seer by Abel Quentin (The Observatory).
Amélie Nothomb won at 2e round, with six votes, against three for Postcard by Anne Berest (Grasset). His novel, First blood, tells the fictitious memories of his father who died in 2020.
“There really I want to say: daddy, we have the price! », She exclaimed at the restaurant Drouant.