Dedicated to the memory of the Malian author Yambo Ouloguem and inspired by his life, La Plus Secrète Mémoire des Hommes, 2021 Prix Goncourt laureate, by Senegalais author Mohamed Mbougar Sarr is a constant questioning about where literature and life meet and what are their limits and limitations.
Obsessively tracing a mysterious author with a successful first novel, later accused of plagiat, a young author born in Senegal and living in France is caught into a labyrinth of lies and deceival and secret lives of real people and their imaginary characters. The writing is dense with fragments of lives interceding from one story to another and a self-ironic tone which balances the seriousness of the ideas.
The writing is very concise, able to evoke thousands of history of literature and colonialism in just few lines. The characters do have a strong and curious and sensual nature.
I always love stories about mysterious writers and long lost books and the literary mysteries surrounding their recovery. This book has also a strong historical (especially of colonial nature) background therefore double interesting both as topic and as literary interpretation.
The questioning of how life and writing world meet, if ever, is an eternal literary question with an inerent tension known to anyone familiar with the world of words. Mohamed Mbougar Sarr turned the question into a parable of literary mastery and strength, with some mystery touches and a good ressemblances to South-American reveries.
A book I will long after reading keep thinking about.
Rating: 4.5 stars
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