「经济学人」The Silence of the Choir

The Senegalese novelist is one of the boldest writers working today

The Silence of the Choir. By Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. Translated by Alison Anderson. Europa Editions; 372 pages; $18 and £14.99

What is in a name? Quite a lot, actually, for Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. The writer’s first name is a nod to the majority faith in Senegal, where he was born. His last name reveals that he comes from its third-biggest ethnic group, the Serer. His middle name means “unloved”. By Serer tradition, children often get tagged with ugly names as a trick to fool evil spirits.

Perhaps that precaution, along with Mr Sarr’s talent, worked. In his teens he won a full scholarship to study in France. He published a first novel at the age of 24 and three more by the time he was 31, scooping a stack of awards on the way. In 2021 he became the first sub-Saharan African to win France’s top literary prize, the Goncourt. That was for “The Most Secret Memory of Men”, his most ambitious and playful book so far, about a young Senegalese writer living in Paris. It was also the most successful: readers in France bought over half a million copies in its first year in print.

“If the folks in Stockholm are alert, Sarr has got to be on their minds,” says Adam Shatz, a critic and writer on post-colonial France. It may be premature to speak of a Nobel prize, but Mr Sarr, now 34 years old, is celebrated far beyond the Francophone world. (The Nobel prize in literature was due to be announced on October 10th, after The Economist went to press.)

Such praise is noteworthy since his books are not easy. “The Silence of the Choir”, newly translated into English, tells the story of 72 refugees from Africa in Sicily. As the characters push forward with their asylum claims, the timely tale unspools with multiple voices and a touch of magical realism. In “Brotherhood” and “De Purs Hommes” (“Of Pure Men”), which has yet to be published in English, Mr Sarr digs into such testy issues as Islamist extremism and homophobia in west Africa.

His writing is bold, but his characters’ motives are subtle. In “Brotherhood”, a deftly drawn internal monologue reveals how the Islamist police chief of a west African city justifies his cruelty with a disturbingly convincing process of logic. In a fictional Sicilian town, by contrast, hostility to African migrants spreads insidiously through what Mr Sarr calls “intellectual laziness…the mother of all deadly sins”.

Mr Sarr is, like his complex creations, both lightly ironic and dead serious. His own convictions come through powerfully in his books. Many of his female characters are strong, faithful and principled. His men are often absent as fathers, fickle as lovers and wobbly in their opinions. Power corrupts, for sure, but “the people” do not hold the answers, either. European acceptance of others, such as Africans, remains largely contingent and ultimately self-serving. But the West’s power is real, and its conventions, such as language, are necessary tools in the modern world.

Including English, Mr Sarr speaks four languages well. But though he writes in crystalline literary French, the voices in his work use a stunning array of registers. There is intimate pillow talk, plenty of frank sex and angry lovers’ quarrels. There are letters, diaries, philosophical discourses, curt text messages and news bulletins. There are rival narrators in a single paragraph, and sometimes page-long sentences. Yet it all somehow makes sense.

Mr Sarr admits that fame has been distracting. Solitude, he has said, is the beginning of creation, and it has been a couple of years since his muses have spoken. He finds writing difficult, painful and even sometimes a catalyst for despair. But at the same time it can be “a form of liberation”. Even his simplest descriptions, like this of dawn, soar: “A few stars lingered in the firmament, as if they’d lost their way during some cosmic pilgrimage.”

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Song of myself”(Oct 10th 2024)

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