Pure Men

A video spreads across Dakar showing an angry crowd digging up a grave and hauling the body out of consecrated ground. Ndéné, a young teacher of French literature, watches it and finds that it shakes him more than he expected. The dead man, he learns, was a góor-jigéen, one of the "men-women," a term of contempt for homosexuals, cross-dressers and any man who lives outside what society accepts.

Unable to shake the images, Ndéné starts looking for answers about who the man was and why he was treated this way. A friend who works in the city's night life opens a door onto a hidden Dakar, far from the strict Islam of his family and his university. Ndéné admits to a certain revulsion toward homosexuality, yet the pain and resilience of the people he meets move him.

The deeper he goes, the more he questions who he himself is, and the more he risks becoming a target of the same suspicion and scorn. Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, the author of The Most Secret Memory of Men, gives a nuanced portrait of queer lives in a conservative society, and asks how a person finds the courage to be true to themselves whatever it costs. The novel was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature.