The Most Secret Memory of Men

This is a gripping literary mystery, an exuberant quest narrative set across two centuries and three continents, and an incisive critique of colonialism and its legacies. When Diégane Latyr Faye, a young Senegalese writer in contemporary Paris, learns of a ‘lost’ 1930s novel, whose author – also Senegalese – disappeared shortly after its publication, he becomes obsessed and sets out to find it. The suppressed book has legendary status among his circle of Black artists and intellectuals, and Diégane, bruised by the lukewarm reception of his own first publication, and searching for inspiration for his second, takes up its trail.

So begins an emotional, political and intensely personal journey that will range from Amsterdam to Dakar to Buenos Aires, via conversations, letters, book reviews and oral histories, telling the stories of several generations marked by history.

While Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives is an overt influence, this is fresh, energetic writing with a voice entirely its own. It’s unapologetically literary in intent and utterly alive in terms of its characters: a love letter to reading and writing that will have industry appeal and lend word of mouth to the already impressive international publication platform.

It is fiercely intellectual, ambitious and absorbing – a police investigation, genealogical study, touching on politics and aesthetics as well as questions of what does it mean to be a writer.

One reviewer called it a critics book, or a professor’s book which I think sums this up nicely.