EXPLICATION DE LA NUIT

Literary, dark but human, Edem Awumey's best book yet. A story of war, terror and redemption.

Ito Baraka is going to die. In Gatineau, far from the sun, in the dark, dank, and shabby flat that he shares with his Native and junkie girlfriend, Kimi. But before he can die, he has a book to finish. A novel in which he recounts events that take place in a country where the suns burns, burns the skin, burns the brain, burns the retina of those forced to look at in without blinking. A country where another sun blazes: a dictator in the grips of fear. When a dictator is gripped by fear, he casts a wide net. First, it's these youths at the university who display their freedom by performing Beckett on makeshift stages and handing out leaflets in which the words written by the author of Endgame have an unexpected resonance. Then it's the elderly, who, as everyone knows, are seers, wizards, and charlatans and who, above all, have the power to bewitch and devour souls. When night falls, they close their eyes and command their spirit to leave their body lying in bed and travel to faraway lands - strange beings hovering over the sleeping masses, their wings of fire stretching in the wind. Is magic not the most dangerous form of subversion? That is how Ito, in his cell, makes the acquaintance of Koli Lem, the blind man who never tears himself away from his books. In the middle of the blackest night, in the words they share, in their very flesh, they become each other's sole source of light. In his fourth novel, Edem Awumey delivers a work of stunning force that relentlessly probes the obscurity that humankind carries in its breast. Edem Awumey was born in Togo in 1975. He now lives in Canada. His first novel, Port-Mélo, published in 2006 by Editions Gallimard, received the Grand Prix litteraire de l'Afrique noire in 2006, one of Africa's most distinguished literary awards. His second novel, Les Pieds sales (Editions du Boreal), was long-listed for the Goncourt in 2009. His work has been published in France, Spain, Netherlands and in English.