After a 2020 edition which had seen the winner, Hervé Le Tellier, crowned for The Anomaly (Gallimard) by videoconference, the Goncourt returned in 2021 to the Parisian restaurant which has been associated with it since 1903. It was from there that Philippe Claudel, secretary general of the prize, announced the name of the crowned writer: Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, distinguished for The most secret memory of men (Philippe Rey / Jimsaan), from the first round. Also in the running: Christine Angot for The Journey to the East (Flammarion), Sorj Chalandon for bastard’s child (Grasset) and Louis-Philippe Dalembert for Milwaukee Blues (Sabine Wespieser Publisher).
Several days before the award ceremony, The most secret memory of men was presented as a favorite. Its author, born in 1990 in Senegal – he is the first author from sub-Saharan Africa to be “honoured”, and the youngest since 1976 – was however not the most famous of the selection; nor the two houses that co-publish it (Philippe Rey on the French side, Jimsaan on the Senegalese side), regulars in the price race. Nor did his text present itself as the easiest to access. But the impressive ambition and dizzying narrative energy of The most secret memory of men took everything in their path.
Raphaëlle Leyris’s article can be found in full below: