Sarah Burnautzki, Abdoulaye Imorou and Cornelia Ruhe, eds. Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's literary labyrinth. Francopolyphonies 36. Suffering; Boston: Brill, 2024.
Content
A circular route
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr is considered a literary sensation. Even as a young author, he tackled themes of world literary significance with intellectual maturity and stylistic brilliance. His writing combines the experience of his Senegalese heritage with a masterful appropriation of European educational traditions. The result is a voice that is both deeply rooted in Africa and universally relatable – full of intertextual allusions, philosophical depth, and a playful delight in language. Mbougar Sarr brings highly complex questions – from identity and memory to the power of storytelling itself – into a form that doesn't feel academic, but rather vibrant, ironic, and sensual. His novels are gripping, sometimes wild narratives that combine poetic power with intellectual wit. He doesn't pit African and Western discourses against each other, but rather brings them into productive friction on equal footing. The author writes so naturally in a transnational and transcultural context that the categories of "center" and "periphery" seem to be rendered obsolete.
The anthology Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's literary labyrinth This volume was edited by Sarah Burnautzki, Abdoulaye Imorou, and Cornelia Ruhe. The contributions collected here were presented at a colloquium held at the University of Mannheim in May 2023. The colloquium brought together a diverse range of international contributors from countries including South Africa, Eswatini, Ghana, Senegal, Canada, the USA, and several European countries (France, Belgium, England, and the Netherlands). In addition to the academic presentations, the event included an evening of dialogue dedicated to the publishing of African literature in French. Mohamed Mbougar Sarr himself also participated in a closing event.
The “labyrinth” to which the editors refer is described as both a conceptual and an aesthetic principle of the novel. La plus secret mémoire des hommes The book understands how the novel's polyphonic structure, the multiplication of narrative voices, and the diverse text genres enhance its "effect de réel" and reveal its numerous intersecting paths. Ultimately, the volume aims to grasp the novel's complexity, whose poetic logic follows a "long circular route" in which the destination merges with the origin. It emphasizes that the novel is not only characterized by... mise en abymebut is also characterized by interweaving, an aesthetic principle that emphasizes the coexistence and interdependence of heterogeneous worlds (cultures, histories, literatures) and rejects the colonial dichotomy of center and periphery. Through the fictionalization of the "Ouologuem Affair," Mbougar Sarr engages intertextually with the Western canon and the history of the racialization of literature. He uses the palimpsest to dismantle the hegemonic "measuring" of the European canon by overwriting and quoting other texts (such as Rimbaud, Mallarmé, or Borges) and to develop a cosmopolitan, pluralistic aesthetic that transcends national and identity-based boundaries. Mbougar Sarr's strategy is interpreted as a "counterattack" and an act of "reparative intertextuality" that expands literary history to include the stories of forgotten and scandalized authors.
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr was born in Dakar in 1990 and initially studied there before continuing his education at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, where he began a dissertation on Léopold Sédar Senghor. His writing career began in 2014 with the novella « La Cale », followed by the novels Terre ceinte (2015) Silence du chœur (2017) and De purs hommes (2018), all of which won prestigious literary prizes. This impressive career was crowned in 2021 with the Prix Goncourt for La plus secret mémoire des hommes This confirmed his position as an author of exceptional talent and great erudition, one who does not shy away from political themes. The book offers a subtle, detailed, and lucid literary meta-reflection. It illuminates the history of African literature and its entanglements with the Parisian literary scene. The plot, which leads the reader into a labyrinth, is inspired by the extraordinary literary career and legendary downfall of the Malian author Yambo Ouologuem.
Mbougar Sarr's texts are characterized by their treatment of politically significant themes. Even in his early works, the author addresses extreme violence and its structural causes. For example, he denounces Terre ceinte The book addresses the total and bloody power of jihadist regimes and highlights the everyday resistance through secret writings and correspondence. Silence du chœur Structural violence and racism in the context of migration are addressed, with the forced coexistence (“convivialisme”) between African migrants and Sicilian locals failing. De purs hommes addresses structural homophobia and the violence directed against the minority of gordjiguène directed. In all three early works, the handling of violent deaths, burials and mourning becomes a political activism that exposes the mechanisms of structural inequality and calls on readers to reflect on their own complicity in this violence.
Mbougar Sarr's aesthetic aims to translate these complex political realities into literature. He employs a multi-layered, polyphonic narrative structure that unites a multitude of voices, perspectives, and genres to disrupt the homogeneity of the narrative. The deliberate intermediality of his works, through the integration of media such as film, video, print, and telephone, serves as a conscious aesthetic and ideological tool to disseminate a critical view of African sociopolitical crises and to counter the official discourse. His portrayal of the "inhuman" (inhuman) is characterized by a rejection of Manichaeism, as he insists that perpetrators cannot be portrayed as mere monsters, nor victims as monolithically innocent, which forces the reader to question individual responsibility.
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr: The Criticism Part (pp. 11–19)
Mbougar Sarr legitimizes literary criticism as a necessary and creative act that uncovers the unreadable aspects of a work and establishes new, productive systems of meaning, considering academic criticism in particular to be essential.
The author begins with the anecdote of a Hungarian reader who read his novel La plus secret mémoire des hommes interpreted as a disguised essay on reading and literary criticism. He accepts that his novel carries a “certain theoretical or critical wish” regarding African literature. Mbougar Sarr distinguishes three types of criticism (spontaneous, professional, magisterial) and considers them all necessary to approach the “undiscoverable truth of a book.” He reads almost all academic articles about his works, as he views criticism and theory as a continuum of the work, ceaselessly creating new systems of meaning. The author acknowledges that his novel poses the question, “For whom do we read?” and that he foregrounds the reading experience of his characters. For the author, criticism is an act of Address – to books and other reading methods that enable a “secret conversation of reading”.
Regarding the individual contributions
Catherine Mazauric: Masculinities in question. The land belongs to the purs of men (pp. 21–38)
Mbougar Sarr's first three novels question the dominant, often violence-ridden male norm by depicting plural masculinities and raising ethical questions about vulnerability and agency ("agentivité").
Mazauric points out that the question of masculinity is central to Mbougar Sarr's early novels, with violence (jihadist, xenophobic, homophobic) being perpetrated exclusively by men. Terre ceinte The norm manifests itself in the violence of the "brotherhood". De purs hommes It addresses homophobic violence, culminating in the desecration of a corpse, which the narrator-protagonist Ndéné Gueye connects to a "purely mental conception" reminiscent of Kristeva's concept of Abjects Mazauric points out that Silence du chœur represents emotional excess, while Terre ceinte highlights the stoic attitude of women in the resistance. The polyphony in Silence du chœur This contributes to the nuance, even if female characters are sometimes perceived in a globalizing way.
This essay offers a coherent reading of Mbougar Sarr's early novels from a gender perspective and highlights the continuity of his critique of patriarchal and violent structures, a theme that runs through his entire early work. It becomes clear that his work has critically examined controversial social issues from the very beginning.
Cornelia Ruhe: Morts, sépultures et deuil. Les fictions thanatographiques de Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (pp. 39–56)
Mbougar Sarr's "thanatographic fictions" (novels that stage violent deaths) illuminate the necropolitical mechanisms (Mbembe) of structural inequality that determine the public's handling of death and mourning, and challenge the reader to reflect on their own implication (Rothberg) to recognize this violence.
Ruhe examines how the author, in his novels, turns the handling of the dead into a political issue. Thanatographies are fictional narratives that depict experiences of violent death resulting from wars or structural inequality. Using the works of Achille Mbembe and Judith Butler as examples, the study demonstrates that the way public discourse frames violent death expresses sovereignty—the power to decide who lives and who dies. Terre ceinte This is demonstrated by the denial of a dignified burial for the stoned couple and the monumental veneration of the jihadist Abdel Karim. De purs hommes The novel addresses the desecration of the grave of a presumably homosexual man by an angry mob in Senegal and the complicity of the academic narrator, who has internalized homophobia. Mbougar Sarr blurs the lines between perpetrator and victim by portraying the protagonists as "implicated subjects" (Rothberg).
This essay provides a theoretical basis for understanding the representation of extreme violence in Mbougar Sarr's work. It connects his novels to global theoretical discourses on necropolitics and postcolonial responsibility, thereby highlighting his literary engagement with real political crises.
Valérie Dusaillant-Fernandes: Agentivité des personnages et engagement littéraire. Voix et détours chez Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (pp. 75–95)
Mbougar Sarr's debut novel Terre ceinte It contrasts the jihadist tyranny with an everyday, polyphonic aesthetic of resistance, realized through the agency ("agentivité") of the characters and the intimate written communication (letters, secret newspaper).
Dusaillant-Fernandes analyzes the novel Terre ceinte as a reflection on commitment in the face of the unspeakable. Resistance is expressed through the publication of the secret newspaper. Rambaaj (which in Wolof means "sower of discord") is embodied by an intellectual elite ("combatants of the word"). In parallel, the correspondence between the mothers of the executed couple, Sadobo and Aïssata, serves as an intimate form of resistance and female agency that breaks the silence. Mbougar Sarr employs a plurivocal narrative form, in which the omniscient narrator acts as a mouthpiece for the implied author. This aesthetic form of resistance aims to sensitize the readership and awaken awareness, rather than simply denounce.
This article underscores Mbougar Sarr's ability to address complex political realities (jihadism in the Sahel) through sophisticated aesthetic strategies. It reinforces the perception of Mbougar Sarr as an author who mediates the political through sensitivity and understands literary form itself as a site of engagement.
Aliou Seck: The “medialization” of the literature in the novels of Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (pp. 109–124)
The “mediatization” of writing in Mbougar Sarr’s novels (Terre ceinte, De purs hommes) is a conscious aesthetic and ideological process that uses media (cinema, telephone, video, press) beyond their usual function as vectors for the critical representation of the socio-political realities of Africa.
Seck argues that Mbougar Sarr's writing style is characterized by hybridity and intermediality, which aesthetically renews the contemporary African novel. The texts are a "site of encounter and influence" between various arts and media. De purs hommes It exhibits strong cinematic elements, including cinematic lexemes and a scenic narrative structure that follows the logic of minimalist storytelling. Media such as the telephone (Terre ceinte) or videos (De purs hommesThese sources are not merely quoted, but actively integrated into the narrative. This intermedial practice serves as a strategy to disseminate Mbougar Sarr's critical view of the crisis-ridden African continent. The blog, the clandestine newspaper, and the letters are expressions of this media-based resistance strategy against official propaganda.
The analysis of mediatization broadens our understanding of Mbougar Sarr's aesthetic as postmodern and media-reflexive. It explains how the author uses the novel's texture to make political commentary and positions him as a writer who actively incorporates contemporary forms of communication into his literary practice.
Abdoulaye Imorou: Les monstres n'existent pas. Sort the labyrinths of the human beings with Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (pp. 125–140)
Mbougar Sarr's treatment of the "inhuman" in his complete works rejects Manichean readings by portraying perpetrators and victims as equally human, thus forcing the reader to abandon their own distancing and to ask the question of individual responsibility.
Imorou notes that the motive of Labyrinthe de l'inhumain Mbougar Sarr's complete works by Cale La plus secret mémoire des hommes pervades the narrative. He questions the figure of the "monster" (perpetrator) and shows that these characters (like Abdel Karim) are convinced of the legitimacy of their actions without having purely malicious motives. Likewise, the victims are not monolithically innocent; in Terre ceinte or Silence du chœur The victim groups also exhibit internal violence or actions that they incorporate into the logic of violence. The text challenges the reader's empathy, particularly through the fantastical hesitation in La plus secret mémoire des hommes (Were Elimane's critics really murdered?). Since perpetrators and victims remain human beings, simple distancing is not possible, and the responsibility lies with the reader's "individual decisions".
This essay is crucial for the ethical understanding of Mbougar Sarr's work. It demonstrates that the complexity is not merely aesthetic, but also represents a moral demand on the reader to confront their own [context]. Possibility to become aware of oneself as a perpetrator or victim.
Julia Görtz: Comment on the migration? The importance of transmission in the silence of the choir of Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (pp. 141–163)
Through the strategic use of polyphony and a variety of text genres (travelogue, newspaper article, play) in Silence du chœur Mbougar Sarr emphasizes the difficulty of narrating migration and underlines the need for Transmission as an act of collective memory.
Görtz examines how Mbougar Sarr portrays the trauma of migration in the fictional Altino (Sicily). The polyphony and shifting focalizations allow for a variety of perspectives (Giuseppe Fantini, Fousseyni Traoré, Jogoy). The characters reflect on the limits of language, with literature serving as a site of memory (lieu de mémoire (according to Nora). The variation in genres serves specific functions: Jogoy's travelogue/diary offers a personal, emotional perspective. In contrast, newspaper articles create distance and regulate emotions, but also serve to expose the partiality and hypocrisy of the official media discourse, whose supposed objectivity is given undue weight. The official version is deliberately abridged to prepare readers for Jogoy's more detailed testimony.
This article examines Mbougar-Sarr's sophisticated handling of the question of genre. It shows that the author writes not only about migration, but also about... Who one should write about migration in order to break the silence of the choir (silence du chœur) to break the migrants.
Lena Seauve: Convivialism, polyphony and violence in the silence of the choir by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (pp. 164–178)
The failure of a forced “convivialisme” (coexistence) between Sicilian locals and African refugees in Silence du chœur is the transhistorical consequence of fundamental inequality and mutual dependence, which is underscored by the polyphonic structure and allusions to ancient tragedy.
Seauve analyzes coexistence in Altino using the critical concept of ConvivialismMbougar Sarr's novel poses the central question: "How can coexistence function under conditions of fundamental inequality?" The polyphony of the text (Bakhtin) reflects the irreconcilability of the positions and allows the increasing violence of language to be shown. The city of Altino is compared to a living organism; the violence of the massacre in the heart of the city ("cœur")"This leads metaphorically to a standstill. The depiction of extreme violence is the culmination of the failure of convivialism. The novel transcends the historical moment of the refugee crisis by drawing on the traditions of tragedy and epic.
Seauve provides a philosophical and genre-theoretical foundation for Silence du chœurThe linking of social conflict with universal, tragic patterns demonstrates Mbougar Sarr's endeavor to connect the local (Sicily/Africa) with global knowledge.
Susanne Gehrmann: De l'enquête au discours queer. The intertextuality in the purses of Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (pp. 193–213)
De purs hommes transforms the model of the crime novel (roman de l'enquête) and enters into an intertextual dialogue with the tradition of gordjiguène as well as the Western “queer discourse” to expose the hypocrisy of Senegalese society in the face of homophobic violence.
Gehrmann examines the literary treatment of homophobia in Senegal, which made Mbougar Sarr a target of criticism. The novel is conceived as a "sociological inquiry," inspired by authors such as Boubacar Boris Diop. Gehrmann analyzes the intertextual modes of "participation," "transformation," and "détournement." The text metatextually anticipates the negative reception of the author (the accusation of "defending homosexuality"). The narrator, Ndéné Gueye, undergoes a journey of self-discovery, moving from internalized homophobia to empathy. Mbougar Sarr parodies and exposes the negative media campaigns against LGBTQI+ people, particularly the dangerous rhetorical radicalization by the jotalikat (human medium) in the oral tradition.
This essay illuminates the risky political aesthetics of De purs hommesHe demonstrates Mbougar Sarr's ability to create a critical, indigenously rooted "queer discourse" through intertextual and genre-based shifts ("détournement").
Émile Lévesque-Jalbert: The worlds enchevêtrés of Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (pp. 214–227)
Instead of the often cited mise en abyme Lévesque-Jalbert proposes the figure of “enchevêtrement” (interlocking) as a central aesthetic principle in La plus secret mémoire des hommes to emphasize the coexistence of heterogeneous worlds (cultures, languages, literature and life) and to underline Mbougar Sarr's contribution to cosmopolitan and pluralistic ethics (Mbembe, F. Sarr).
While criticism often focuses on Mbougar Sarr's "dizzying" mise en abyme“(narrative within a narrative) highlights, Lévesque-Jalbert argues that the tangle better describes the topology of the novel: a superimposition and mutual dependence of elements that are heterogeneous, without hierarchical relationships (as in the mise en abyme) to be embedded. This is illustrated by the scene with Siga D. and the encounter with Jesus Christ in the salon (alongside the friends' sex), where the spaces and discourses (sexuality vs. literature, animism vs. Christianity) interfere. The tangle is the literary form of pluralism that enables a “cosmopoetic” and “cosmopolitan” attitude.
This theoretical contribution offers a tool for understanding Mbougar Sarr's intercultural aesthetic beyond simple intertextuality. It legitimizes his stylistic complexity as a conscious ethical and political position that rejects the dichotomous colonial logic of center and periphery.
Alicia C. Montoya: « An African écrivain aux prizes avec la Shoah »… (pp. 228–246)
Mbougar Sarr designs in La plus secret mémoire des hommes through the Afro-Jewish couple Elimane-Ellenstein and strong intertextual references (Bolaño, Borges, Jabès, Schwarz-Bart) a new “multidirectional memory” (Rothberg) emerges, which merges the experiences of Shoah and colonization into a postcolonial aesthetic.
Montoya points out that Mbougar Sarr consciously interweaves memory through his choice of the year 1938 and the literary references to the Shoah (e.g., to André Schwarz-Bart and Primo Levi). The central pair, Elimane (an African author) and Charles Ellenstein (a Jewish publisher), manifests Rothberg's concept of multidirectional memory, in which memories reinforce each other instead of competing. Ellenstein's identity is strongly linked to the book as "home" (referencing Edmond Jabès and Jewish tradition). The triangle is completed by the Nazi Josef Engelmann, who murders Ellenstein and silences Elimane. Mbougar Sarr refers to Borges' Aleph and the figure of the author, who disappears in the labyrinth and may himself become a "bloodthirsty king".
This analysis reveals the most ambitious and sensitive intercultural and historical dimensions of Mbougar Sarr's novel. It underscores the author's commitment to world literature by processing traumatic memories from different continents in a single literary act.
Bernard De Meyer: A crocodile is a cacher in another... (pp. 247–260)
Mbougar Sarr's frequent use of the crocodile motif in La plus secret mémoire des hommes is an intertextual homage to Paul Lomami Tshibamba (Ngando, 1948), which deliberately deviates from the mystical or morbid-fantastic representation and instead seeks a decolonial and ecological perspective on this liminal space.
De Meyer identifies the crocodile motif, which appears several times in the novel, particularly in Elimane's backstory. He establishes a connection to Tshibamba, whose Ngando Considered the first novel by a Congolese author and published in 1948, Tshibamba was contemporary with the fictional Elimane. While earlier African texts (Ouologuem, Kourouma) often portray the crocodile as a harbinger of death or a fantastical creature, Mbougar Sarr integrates the figure into a decolonial and ecological aesthetic. The crocodile is seen as a hybrid being that situates the complex reality of the African space and its myths within a “vernacular cosmopolitanism” (Bhabha).
This essay shifts the focus away from purely Francophone/European references (Ouologuem, Rimbaud) and towards Mbougar Sarr's careful integration of African literary precursors, thereby asserting his claim as écrivain-monde underpinned.
Sarah Burnautzki: « Écrire, ne pas écrire ». Arthur Rimbaud, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr and the poetry of modernity (pp. 273–290)
Mbougar Sarr's fictionalization of the "Ouologuem Affair" in La plus secret mémoire des hommes represents an intertextual engagement with Arthur Rimbaud, in which Mbougar Sarr takes up the unfinished poetic project of poet-voyant (his aesthetics of horrible worker and the failure of representability) is completed as an act of intertextual repair.
Burnautzki examines the connection between T.C. Elimane/Yambo Ouologuem and Arthur Rimbaud, both of whom entered and failed as "avant-garde" figures in unequal literary fields. Mbougar Sarr's novel places Elimane alongside Rimbaud by sharing his failure to represent his vision effectively. Mbougar Sarr adopts Rimbaud's aesthetic of "dérèglement des sens" (disturbance of the senses) and the concept of the poet as a "terrible worker" ("horrible travailleur"The narrator Faye's realization of the inevitable failure of writing leads to the destruction of Elimane's literary estate. This destruction is metapoetically an act of "repair" (reparative intertextuality), symbolically freeing Elimane's work from the stigma of its failure and presenting Mbougar Sarr's novel as a continuation of the unfinished project of seeing established.
This essay delves deeper into Mbougar Sarr's self-referentiality and his positioning within literary history. It demonstrates that his novel is a highly complex poetics-based commentary on the possibility of a modern literature, placing African literature (Ouologuem) in direct dialogue with the founding figures of European modernism (Rimbaud).
Kathleen Gyssels: 'Goncourables' at all prices... (pp. 291–306)
Mbougar Sarr's novel is a strategic work that relativizes the Goncourt Prize by using its intertextual cartography (especially the Polish-Jewish axis Schwarz-Bart and Gombrowicz) to reflect the ambivalent relationship of the Afro-Polish author to his French "homeland" and the persistent mistrust of the "other" (Jew, Black person) in the transatlantic triangle.
Gyssels analyzes Mbougar Sarr's strategic placement within the canon of world literature. She addresses the double "guilt" of literary France towards minority authors, which was absolved by the Goncourt Prize awarded to Mbougar Sarr (comparing him to René Maran in 1921 and André Schwarz-Bart in 1959, both of whom were criticized after receiving the prize). Gyssels focuses on the Polish axis: Schwarz-Bart (of Polish-Jewish descent) and Witold Gombrowicz (Polish). Schwarz-Bart, who explored the shared experience of Jews and Black people as oppressed, indirectly influenced Mbougar Sarr, for example through... multidirectional memoryGombrowicz, the Polish emigrant in Argentina, is seen as a figure of the uprooted who rejects national pathos. Mbougar Sarr's intertextuality serves as a strategy of self-legitimization (auto-homologation), which positions him as an encyclopedic writer.
The article reveals the multifaceted nature of Mbougar Sarr's intertextuality, which extends beyond the African or French protagonists and brings to the fore complex, often forgotten axes of literary cosmopolitanism. This confirms Mbougar Sarr's position as an intellectual boundary-crosser.
Joanne Brueton: 'Courir' derrière l'immense littérature occidentale?… (pp. 307–325)
Mbougar Sarr decolonizes in La plus secret mémoire des hommes the Western canon by means of the palimpsest figure, by challenging Glissant's concept of "Mesure" (with regard to authority and universalism) and using Mallarmé to develop a poetics of "Démesure" that transcends national and identity boundaries.
Brueton begins with Mbougar Sarr's call for a "war of cannons" and Glissant's analysis of the "measure" of classicism: an epistemological dominance that appropriates other cultures and declares them to be universal values. Mbougar Sarr's novel as a palimpsest, a superimposition of texts, exposes the structural injustice. Elimanes (Le Labyrinthe de l'inhumainPlagiarism is condemned by critics, even though it merely reveals the mimethic process of the Western canon (e.g., the Pléiade – the incorporation of precursors), which violently erases its own sources. Brueton sees in Mbougar Sarr's parody of the intellectual Teste (Diégane) a critique of European logocentrism and the despotism of the mind over the body. Mbougar Sarr turns to Mallarmé in order to find a literature that transcends the “colonial nature” of culture and celebrates a “relational globality” (Glissant).
This essay offers a thorough theoretical foundation for Mbougar Sarr's decolonial aesthetics. It shows that the author does not simply reject the Western canon, but rather dismantles it from within and exposes the concept of originality itself as an instrument of power.
Oana Panaïté: Sorting the labyrinths of the literary history (white) (pp. 326–342)
Mbougar Sarr's novel (La plus secret mémoire des hommesThe novel functions as necrofiction (a literary tomb) that critically reflects the racialization of literature in the French literary field and reactivates the history of the "affairs" surrounding Black authors (Maran, Ouologuem, Beyala). However, by emphasizing aesthetic freedom, the novel risks obscuring the determining material and ideological constraints.
Panaïté analyzes Mbougar Sarr's novel as a critical reflection of the dynamics that define French literary criticism. The narrative is permeated by the history of Black authors who have been branded either as geniuses or plagiarists. Necrofiction is a narrative practice that gathers the remnants of literary history to rectify injustices and demonstrate the creative power of the literary corpus. The character Elimane is the prime example of the double expectation placed on Black authors: they are supposed to be "worthy," yet their status remains precarious and marginalized. Panaïté criticizes the "white history of literature" ("histoire littéraire (blanche)"), which marginalizes non-white authors, even in studies of contemporary literature (Dosse). The novel employs biting irony to denaturalize racist stereotypes, but simultaneously adopts the aesthetic stance of an "aesthete's position," prioritizing artistic freedom over sociological conditions.
Panaïté's contribution offers an important critique of the anthology itself by highlighting the danger that Mbougar Sarr, through his meta-reflexive style, may deconstruct the deeply rooted "white hegemony" but potentially downplay its continuing impact on postcolonial literary production.
interludes
Isabel Kupski: Comment on a program d'edition? (pp. 263–266)
Decision-making in a publishing program is an economically and programmatically responsible task, in which scouts play a central role as strategic advisors to identify bestsellers and literary quality.
This insight into the logic of publishing (especially in German-speaking countries) provides a practical context for Mbougar Sarr's satire on the literary world. He explains how literary success and awards influence decision-making.
Réassi Ouabonzi: La part du bloggerueur (pp. 181–187)
The alleged “boom” of African literature in France after Mbougar Sarr’s Goncourt win is deceptive; true legitimacy and autonomy require the development of a strong reading public and critical institutions on the African continent itself.
Ouabonzi's perspective (as a blogger) offers a non-academic and practice-oriented addition, addressing the structural and economic problems of African literature outside the Parisian centers. It expands the critique of the "Republic of Letters" to include the dimension of accessibility and local reading.
Raphaël Thierry: A boussole pour mieux s'orienter au milieu des livres (pp. 347–353)
The work of a literary agent is a struggle between the pull of Parisian centralism (Goncourt effect) and the goal of promoting decentralized ways of fostering the Bibliodiversity to find and bring African authors into the "long period of literature".
Thierry's account as a literary agent who marketed Mbougar Sarr's early works provides concrete evidence of the Goncourt Prize's ambivalence: it accelerates international dissemination but simultaneously cements Paris as a central bottleneck. This is an essential addition to the academic critique of the "World Republic of Letters."
You wish
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's literary labyrinth It not only comprehensively illuminates the author's work, but also implicitly and explicitly identifies several research desiderata for subsequent works, particularly regarding the structural conditions of African literature and the aesthetic depth of Mbougar Sarr's texts.
Institutional and socio-economic desiderata
The structural and institutional problems of African literature in the context of the “République mondiale des lettres” are identified as a central deficiency that requires further research:
Perhaps the most important desideratum concerns the close ties between African literature and the Parisian literary scene, and the resulting weakness of the African book market. It is argued that future research must investigate how African literature can become autonomous by building a strong readership, local criticism, and robust institutions of legitimacy on the African continent itself.
It remains to be explored how to escape the centralism of Paris and promote editorial diversity. The goal is to find alternative avenues of translation in order to publish works from "other centers" that are not systematically relegated to marginality.
The literary agency asks how works can be freed from the “editorial urgency” and transferred into the “long period of literature” (“temps long de la littérature”), so as not to be dependent solely on short-term success such as the Goncourt Prize.
Oana Panaïté criticizes the “white history of literature” (“histoire littéraire (blanche)”) and demands that future criticism must take greater account of the racialization of literature in the French-speaking world and analyze the mechanisms that maintain the structural marginalization of non-white authors.
Aesthetic and theoretical desiderata
Although the volume already offers thorough aesthetic analyses, new theoretical approaches emerge that need to be explored in greater depth:
There is a need for further research to analyze Mbougar Sarr's work more closely in terms of its material and ideological constraints, rather than overemphasizing artistic freedom. A sociological reading should avoid the risk of trivializing Mbougar Sarr's themes through excessive aestheticization, a risk Panaïté sees as inherent in the "aesthete's position."
The introduction of the concept of “enchevêtrement” (entanglement) as a topology to describe Mbougar Sarr’s aesthetics, which emphasizes the coexistence of heterogeneous worlds, requires further application and differentiation beyond the analysis conducted so far.
For novels like Silence du chœur A more in-depth functional analysis of the various text genres used (travelogue, newspaper article, play) is necessary to better understand their contribution to the transmission of the migration and trauma experience.
Reference is made to the recurring motif of music in Mbougar Sarr's entire oeuvre (e.g. Super Diamono, Tango, NianiA comprehensive intertextual investigation of music and its function as a form of communication that creates new communities and resists ("intermélodicité 'récituelle'") is suggested as an open task.
Although Mazauric analyzes masculinities in the first three novels, the discussion about Silence du chœur The need was indicated to conduct a deeper, more comprehensive gender analysis of the female characters as well, who, due to their complexity within the polyphonic structure, are not always easy to distinguish.
Overall view of the anthology
The anthology Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's literary labyrinth This is a necessary resource for understanding the author's work. The editors have successfully addressed the central aesthetic and political tensions within the author's oeuvre.
Danger of the intentionality trap
Although the book Mbougar excellently analyzes Sarr's metareflexive strategies, the strong focus on La plus secret mémoire des hommes (For understandable reasons related to its success at Goncourt) there is a risk of reading Mbougar Sarr's entire oeuvre too much from the perspective of his later novel. The theses of authors like Burnautzki and Brueton, who read Mbougar Sarr's novel as a philosophical-poetological commentary, could steer its reception in a purely aestheticist direction, which runs counter to Panaïté's decolonial critique, which warns against the danger of ignoring material and ideological constraints in favor of the "freedom of art."
Multiple perspectives and polyphony
The book's great strength lies in its genuine multi-perspective approach, which not only unites academic voices (German studies, Romance studies, literary theory) but also gives a voice to key players in the literary world—the author, the blogger, the scout, and the literary agent. This enables a comprehensive analysis of the "politics of literature" and the tension between the centralist pull of Paris and the necessity of bibliodiversity.
Critical positioning
This volume successfully situates Mbougar Sarr's work at the intersection of global debates: necropolitics and structural violence (Ruhe, Imorou), queerness and local homophobia (Gehrmann), decolonial aesthetics and canon critique (Brueton, Panaïté, Lévesque-Jalbert), and multidirectional memory (Montoya). The analyses demonstrate that Mbougar Sarr's work emphasizes the complexity of the (in)human ("l'inhumain") and the rejection of simplistic dichotomies.
This collection of essays effectively maps out Mbougar Sarr's labyrinth. It offers an intellectual engagement with an author whose work makes the entire literary machinery—from genre reflection and canon formation to the economics of the book—the subject of his art. The contributions not only provide readings but also continue the multifaceted reflection on Mbougar Sarr's work on both academic and practical levels.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
