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Award History
| Award | Year | Status | Citation |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Book Award for Translated Literature | 2026 | Longlist |
About This Book
Translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud, Sarr's novel follows a literature professor in Dakar who, after a viral video of a crowd exhuming the body of a queer person, tests the boundaries of his conservative Islamic community and reexamines his own sexuality. Longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award for Translated Literature.
About the Authors
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr is a Senegalese novelist born in 1990 in Diourbel. He studied literature in Dakar and Paris, where he obtained a master's degree from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. He is the youngest writer ever to win the Prix Goncourt and the first sub-Saharan African author to do so. Read more →
Lara VergnaudAmerican
Lara Vergnaud is an American translator of French prose, creative nonfiction, and scholarly works. She has received two PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants and a French Voices Grand Prize. With Mohamed Mbougar Sarr she was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature for The Most Secret Memory of Men; her translation of Pure Men was longlisted in 2026.
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