Literature and Colonialism: Reading by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr – Munich

“Never try to say what a great book is about. If you do, the only possible answer is: ‘About nothing’https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/.” So how should one read Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s novel Describing “man’s most secret memory” (Hanser)? Luckily, right after these sentences, the writer gives an indication of how it could work. Because: “An important book always tells about nothing, and yet everything is in it.”

One could leave it at that and just add the recommendation: important book, reading by the author is worth a visit. Between nothing and everything, however, there might still be a little leeway for a few additional hints. France’s most important literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, which the novel was awarded in 2021, already confirms that this debut is a great success. However, the complexity and always resonating irony of the artfully nested book, which aims to impress in every respect, also includes the fact that it counteracts the importance of such awards at the same time.

That has to do with its content, pardon me: Sarr, born in 1990 in the Senegalese capital Dakar, wrote a great homage to Yambo Ouologuem, to whom he also dedicated the book. Ouologuem was a Mali-born writer who won the equally important French Prix Renaudot with his first novel in 1968, but withdrew forever in the face of racist allegations including plagiarism.

Sarr now fictionalizes this true story. He gives his colleague the name TC Elimane and stages his own work as a great search for the mysterious author. This gives him an opportunity to describe the “complete desolation of alienation” experienced by an African writer in France. An alienation that may go back to the days of colonialism, but still characterizes the literary circles in Paris to this day: should one stay in the “African ghetto” – or is “knighting by the French literary scene” the greatest dream after all?

“Knighting through the French literary scene”

In any case, Sarr received this accolade. At the German book premiere at the Berlin Literary Colloquium at the end of November, one saw a young man who seemed as modest as he was brilliant; Next to him sat his translators Holger Fock and Sabine Müller, who were “carried away” by the “variety of stylistic devices, pitches, registers” and voices in the book and yet faced unusual questions such as: “What noises do crocodiles make?” (They growl, that’s their answer.) Because Sarr pulls out all the stops of modern writing, sets highly elaborate passages next to sex fantasies, builds thriller-like tension and of course doesn’t forget the black magic that is obligatory in the African context. As if that weren’t enough, all of this is presented by first-person narrators who sometimes change almost imperceptibly.

In short, the book is a challenge – and, if you accept it, a special kind of reading pleasure. It is probably best to relax and follow another recommendation of the author: “The whole picture cannot be overlooked”. , writes Sarr, and that may not only apply to the search for TC Elimane, but also to the novel itself. “You have to find your meaning, your beauty or your ugliness, your enigma and the key to your enigma in a detail.” That’s all.

Reading by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Wednesday, February 8, 7 p.m., Literaturhaus Munich, Salvatorplatz, literaturhaus-muenchen.de

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