Senegal's New Anti-LGBTQ Law Inspires Controversial Novel on Homophobia

In early March, Senegalese parliamentarian Diaraye Ba urged the chamber to silence homosexual expression, a stance that was applauded, and the president is poised to sign legislation that raises the maximum sentence for same-sex acts from five to ten years while criminalising LGBTQ advocacy. Against this backdrop, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s novel Pure Men, first published in 2018 and recently rendered into English by Lara Vergnaud, portrays professor Ndene Gueye’s unsettling discovery of a viral video showing a queer man exhumed from a Muslim cemetery.

The narrative delves into the country’s belief that queerness is a Western import threatening Muslim values, and it traces the evolution of the slur “goor-jigeen” from a cultural role to a pejorative label. Supporting voices like Human Rights Watch’s Angela and the transvestite entertainer Samba Awa Niang expose the historical presence of gender-nonconforming identities and the lethal power of rumor. Sarr’s work also interrogates how activism can backfire, suggesting that external pressure may intensify homophobia. By dramatizing the personal costs of allyship and the myth of African heterosexual purity, the novel underscores the shrinking space for queer rights in Senegal under the new law.