Mohamed Mbougar Sarr Discusses the Novel Behind "Pure Men" With His Translator
The Senegalese novelist and his English translator Lara Vergnaud spoke with Words Without Borders about the origins of the book, part of the magazine's series of interviews with National Book Award contenders.
Words Without Borders has published an interview with Mohamed Mbougar Sarr and his translator Lara Vergnaud, part of the outlet's ongoing series of conversations with National Book Award interviewees. The exchange centers on "Pure Men," Vergnaud's English translation of Sarr's novel, and on how the book first took shape in French before crossing into English.
Asked about the novel's origins, Sarr described a formative memory from 2008, when he was eighteen and a student at a military high school in Senegal. He recalled watching a disturbing video, passed from phone to phone, showing an angry crowd digging up a grave. According to the interview, that image stayed with him and fed into the writing of the book years later.
The conversation, as published by Words Without Borders, also touches on the collaborative work between author and translator in moving the text from its original French into English, though the publication offers only the opening of that exchange rather than a full account of the process.
Sarr is already known to French readers as the author of "La Plus Secrète Mémoire des hommes," winner of the Prix Goncourt in 2021. This latest interview, tied to the National Book Award's translated literature strand, gives an English-language audience — and now a French one, through this report — a glimpse of an earlier work finding new readers abroad.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.