The article gives a comparative reading of De purs hommes (2018) by Senegalese author Mohamed Mbougar Sarr and Proust, roman familial (2023) by French-American writer and scholar Laure Murat. Couched in posthumanist affect theory with reference to Gilles Deleuze, Rosi Braidotti, and Astrida Neimanis, the readings start from the assumption that a text is subject-constituting assemblage. This provides a point of departure for understanding texts that engage with the dynamic relation between fact and fiction. In combination with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, posthumanist theory also allows for identifying the affirmative queerness of trauma. Exploring the aftermath of a viral video showing the desecration of an alleged homosexual man’s tomb, Sarr’s novel follows its protagonist in a process of coming to terms with his own sexual desire. Moreover, the novel explores confrontations between Senegalese homophobia and a Western, colonialist approach to sexual diversity, showing the need for alternative understandings of gender and sexuality. Writing a book-length essay on her upbringing in the aristocracy, Murat uses Marcel Proust’s novel A la recherche du temps perdu as a critical intertext. Here, trauma comprises the insidious marginalization of emotional care and the erasure of experiences that do not fall in line with the empty performativity of the upper classes. Thus, Proust, roman familial is a tribute to the power of imaginative literature to shed critical light on sociocultural and individual issues of trauma. Both works explore the outsider status of the same-sex desiring individual, using vicariously experienced trauma as a perspective for exploring alternative sexual politics.