The character arc of Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born 20 June 1990 in Dakar, raised in Diourbel in a large Serer family. Between then and now sit an elite military school in Saint Louis, a move to France, research on Senghor he abandoned, a first novel in 2015, a second in 2017, a third in 2018, and the Prix Goncourt in 2021. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Tap the line to pluck it. Hover or tap any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of his life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Mohamed Mbougar Sarr?
He left the thesis, and took the Goncourt.
He was born in Dakar in 1990 and grew up in Diourbel, one of many children in a Serer family. His father was a physician. He did his secondary studies at the Prytanee militaire de Saint Louis, one of the most selective schools in Senegal, and then moved to France for preparatory classes at a lycee in Compiegne.
He went on to the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris and began doctoral research on Leopold Sedar Senghor, the poet who became Senegal's first president. He did not finish it. He abandoned the thesis to write fiction, which from the outside looks like giving up an academic career to gamble on novels, because that is what it was.
The novels came quickly. A short story took the Prix Stephane Hessel in 2014. Terre ceinte, in 2015, won the Prix Ahmadou Kourouma. Silence du choeur, in 2017, took African migrants in Sicily as its subject. De purs hommes, in 2018, took homosexuality in Senegal as its subject, which almost nobody writing there had done. Then in November 2021 La plus secrete memoire des hommes won the Prix Goncourt, France's oldest and most watched literary prize, and he was the first person from sub Saharan Africa to win it. He was thirty one. His line is worth reading for the abandoned thesis: six years later the prize was for a novel about a lost African writer, which is the subject the thesis had been circling all along.
The moments
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's timeline.
The 2000s
The military school
Milestone, and it changed his direction. Boarding school, uniform, discipline, a long way from Diourbel.
France, and the classes prepas
Milestone, and it changed his direction. The French preparatory classes, which are as hard as anything in European education.
The 2010s
Research on Senghor
Milestone. The poet who became Senegal's first president, and the natural subject for a Senegalese scholar in Paris.
He abandoned the thesis
Setback, and it changed everything. An academic career given up for novels nobody had asked for yet.
Finish the doctorate, or write
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: abandon the thesis, taken, or finish and take a post. Two years later his first novel won the Prix Ahmadou Kourouma, and in 2021 he took the Goncourt.
A prize for a story
Milestone, and it changed his direction. The first sign that the gamble was not mad.
Terre ceinte
Milestone, and it changed everything. A first novel, and a prize named for one of the great African novelists.
Silence du choeur
Milestone. He went to the subject rather than waiting for it to become fashionable.
De purs hommes
Milestone, and it changed his direction. A subject almost nobody writing in Senegal had taken on. He took it on third.
The 2020s
The Prix Goncourt
Milestone, and it changed everything. France's oldest literary prize, given since 1903, and he was the first from his part of the world to take it.
The line reaches today still adding to itself, which is why it is drawn now rather than at the end. What it has set moving is a precedent with a date on it: the Goncourt had been given since 1903, and in 2021 it went to sub Saharan Africa for the first time.
What he wrote
Books by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
- 2014
Brotherhood
- 2018
De purs hommes
- 2021
The Most Secret Memory of Men
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Sources
- Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, English Wikipedia biography.
- Academie Goncourt, 2021 award record.