In 2018, Diégane Latyr Paye, a young Senegalese writer, discovered in Paris a legendary book published in 1938: *Le Labyrinthe de l'inhumain*. The author—once dubbed the “Black Rimbaud”—had vanished from the public eye following the scandal sparked by the publication of his work. Fascinated, Diégane sets out on the trail of the mysterious T.C. Elimane, confronting the great tragedies of colonialism and the Holocaust along the way.

From Senegal to France via Argentina, what truth awaits him at the heart of this labyrinth? Without ever losing sight of this quest that consumes him, Diégane, in Paris, spends time with a group of young African writers: they observe one another, discuss, drink, make love frequently, and ponder the necessity of creative expression born of exile. Above all, he becomes attached to two women: the scandalous Siga, keeper of secrets, and the elusive photojournalist Aïda....

With boundless inventiveness, *La plus secrète mémoire des hommes* is a dizzying novel, dominated by the dilemma of choosing between writing and life, or by the desire to transcend the question of the confrontation between Africa and the West. Above all, it is a love song to literature and its timeless power. “Is time a murderer? Yes. It shatters within us the illusion that our wounds are unique. They are not. No wound is unique. Nothing human is unique. Everything becomes dreadfully commonplace over time. That is the impasse; but it is within this impasse; but it is within that impasse that literature has a chance to emerge.”