THE SILENCE OF THE CHOIR, translated from the French by Alison Anderson
191pp., paperback, Europa Editions, First English Language Edition, London, 2024
ISBN: 9781787705067
First published in French in 2017 as Silence du chœur.
Seventy-two 'migrants' or ragazzi arrive in the small Sicilian town of Altino to a mixed reception.
“Sarr uses a range of third-person perspectives that vary in scope and style. Alison Anderson’s deft translation is all the more impressive for the ease with which she manages these shifts. Characters aren’t revealed so much as they are refracted through different narrative lenses, allowing us to consider how a story’s form, perhaps more than the story itself, can determine how we understand a person.” Dinaw Mengestu, The New York Times Book Review
"Sarr sees the humanity and flaws of both the ragazzi and the townspeople, and raises fundamental questions about 'respect and dignity”' belonging and what it means to be welcomed ... lays bare the many reasons people leave their homes and offers a clear-eyed interrogation of disrupted lives and alienation. His masterly novel serves as a powerful call for compassion." The Guardian
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr was born in Dakar in 1990. He studied literature and philosophy at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Brotherhood, his first novel, won the Grand Prix du Roman Métis, the Prix Ahmadou Kourouma, and the French Voices Grand Prize, in Alexia Trigo’s translation. In 2018 he became the youngest writer to receive the World Literature Prize and the Solidarity Prize for Silence of the Choir. His third novel, The Most Secret Memory of Men, won the 2021 Goncourt Prize.