La plus secrète mémoire des hommes

In 2018, Diégane Latyr Faye, a young Senegalese writer, discovers a mythical book in Paris, published in 1938: Le labyrinthe de l'inhumain. The author, described in his day as the "negro Rimbaud", has been lost to history since the scandal triggered by the publication of his text. Fascinated, Diégane sets out on the trail of the mysterious T.C. Elimane, confronting the great tragedies of colonialism and the Holocaust. From Senegal to France by way of Argentina, what truth awaits him at the center of this labyrinth?

Without ever losing the thread of this quest that consumes him, Diégane, in Paris, frequents a group of young African authors: they all observe each other, discuss, drink, make love a lot, and wonder about the necessity of creation from exile. Above all, he becomes attached to two women: the sultry Siga, the keeper of secrets, and the fleeting photojournalist Aïda...

Overwhelmingly inventive, La plus secrète mémoire des hommes is a dizzying novel, dominated by the demand to choose between writing and life, or by the desire to move beyond the question of the face-off between Africa and the West. Above all, it is a love song to literature and its timeless power.