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by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
A polyphonic tale of immigration and community by "the most promising Senegalese writer of his generation" (Le Monde) and winner of the 2021 Prix Goncourt
Seventy-two men arrive in the middle of the Sicilian countryside. They are "immigrants," "refugees" or "migrants." But in Altino, they're called the ragazzi, the "guys" that the Santa Marta Association have taken responsibility for. In this small Sicilian town, their arrival changes life for everybody.
While they wait to know their fate, the ragazzi encounter all kinds of people: a strange vicar who rewrites their pasts, a woman committed to ensuring them asylum, a man determined to fight against it, an older ragazzo who has become an interpreter, and a reclusive poet who no longer writes.
Each character in this moving and important saga is forced to reflect on what it means to encounter people they know nothing about. They watch as a situation unfolds over which they have little control or insight. A story told through a growing symphony of voices that ends only when one final voice brings silence to the choir.
"An insightful overview of Europe's modern refugee crisis... This is a timely work, profoundly relevant to our understanding of population shifts not only in Africa and Europe but around the globe. Dramatic, compelling writing on the dimensions of cultural disruption and the possibilities of reintegration." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A climax involving a statue that comes to life and a volcanic eruption evoke the magical realism and natural disasters found in the works of Gabriel García Márquez and William Faulkner, although it ends without resolving the difficult questions posed by the story. Sarr's admirers will be pleased, but his debut, Brotherhood, remains a better starting point for readers new to his work." —Publishers Weekly
"A raucously polyphonic novel." —The New Yorker
"Breathtaking." —Hybrida
"[The Silence of the Choir] is bathed in an optimistic light—that of the solidarity that resurfaces in the hardest times." —Jeune Afrique
This information about The Silence of the Choir was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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 (Europa, 2021), won the Grand Prix du Roman Métis, the Prix Ahmadou Kourouma, and the French Voices Grand Prize. In 2018, he became the youngest writer to have been awarded the World Literature Prize, for his second novel, Silence of the Choir. His third novel, The Most Secret Memory of Men (Other Press, 2023), won the 2021 Goncourt Prize and was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award.
Alison Anderson's translations for Europa Editions include novels by Sélim Nassib, Amélie Nothomb, and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. She is the translator of The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.
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