Presentation

The novel begins in the African Jungle with a violent struggle between two men : Laurent Kala, the white man, is about to kill Mamad, his black servant. Two successive flashbacks show us the fight Mamad has been leading since childhood in order to build a better future for himself. Extraordinary efforts that have turned out to be in vain. Mamad has stayed in Africa and become a servant. Laurent Kala grew up in Paris, his father teaching him early on an awareness of the Black cause. Laurent too, aged just ten, has to face a harsh reality when he loses his father, killed in a protest against the assassination of Martin Luther King. In retrospect, we come to understand how these two mens destinies have been sealed and the reasons that have made the son of a French humanist become such a violent man. Not without humor, this novel paints some moving portraits of men and women caught up by their family history and their origins.

Louis-Philippe Dalembert was born in Port-au-Prince in 1962. A novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist, this one time boarder at the Villa Medicis is the author of Le crayon du bon Dieu n’a pas de gomme, L’Autre Face de la mer (Prix RFO) and Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis.