Books: The Scandal of Literature

Something to think of from Public Books' review of Putting French Literary History on Trial:

In fact, Sarr’s novel is less about an actual literary scandal and more about the scandal of literature itself. It is about how, in the face of immense suffering and rampant inequality, literature continues to offer itself up to us, to borrow Sarr’s own words, as “response, as problem, as faith, as shame, as pride, as life.” It is about how literature inhabits, haunts, and sustains us. It is about why we continue to write and read in the face of great personal risk and in the direst of circumstances. Above all, perhaps, Sarr’s novel affirms that French is an African language. And that the future of literature in French is African.

sch 4/28/22