Highlights – Fiction – Présence Africaine

Summary: Evocation d’un memorial à Venise (“Evocation of a Memorial in Venice”) by Khalid Lyamlahy is a subtle and moving novel that takes as its starting point the story of Pateh Sabally, a Gambian refugee who drowned in the Grand Canal in Venice in January 2017. The narrator, a Moroccan writer, is deeply affected by Pateh’s death and decides years later to go to Venice to understand the reasons behind this tragic event. The book, composed of fragments, is notably influenced by the work of Aimé Césaire (Moi laminaire, Les armes miraculeuses), and alternates between the narrator’s quest and a reconstitution of Pateh’s youth in Gambia until his last journey by train from Milan to Venice.
The novel explores the themes of the migration crisis and human dignity, and uses poetry to fill the gaps in Pateh’s story. The work is also an ode to memory and a tribute to migrants who have lost their lives in the Mediterranean. The Moroccan writer also addresses the challenges faced by artists when trying to create memorials for deceased migrants, such as resistance from local authorities.
Through this novel, Khalid Lyamlahy deals with the themes of art, memory, and migration. He highlights the importance of giving a voice to marginalized people and not letting them be forgotten by history. The author thus feeds his literary work with his own experience as a Moroccan writer and the difficulty for Moroccan writers to find publishers to publish their works.
Khalid Lyamlahy believes in the importance of literature to stimulate dialogue and understanding between cultures. He also expresses his support for migrants and his hope that governments and societies around the world will take action to help those who are forced to leave their countries due to war, poverty, and persecution.
Khalid Lyamlahy’s work highlights the importance of giving a voice to marginalized people and not letting them be forgotten by history. It also emphasizes the challenges that artists face when trying to create memorials for deceased migrants, such as resistance from local authorities. Through this novel, Khalid Lyamlahy explores themes of art, memory, and migration, and expresses his support for migrants and his hope that governments and societies worldwide will take steps to help those who are forced to leave their countries due to war, poverty, and persecution.

Publication: Présence Africaine, 2023
Language: French
Rights: World rights to Présence Africaine
Genre: Second Novel
Extent: 172 p.
Material: English sample available

Bio: Khalid Lyamlahy was born in 1986 in Rabat (Morocco). A former civil Engineer, he holds a PhD in French & Francophone studies from Oxford University. He is currently Assistant Professor in Francophone Literature at the University of Chicago. Lyamlahy contributes to several literary magazines & academic journals. He already published a first novel, A Foreign Novel (Présence Africaine, 2017) his brilliant first novel, dealt with a three-sided quest (love, residence permit & writing). Evocation d’un mémorial à Venise is currently selected for the shortlist of the Alain Spiess Second Novel Award and has also earned a place in the Young Alain Spiess Award selection.

Link to the book on Présence Africaine: Here

Rights inquiries: Here

© Khalid Lyamlahy

5761 kilometers. That’s the distance between Banjul and Venice. Over a hundred times the size of the lagoon. Every kilometer is a cut into the body of the stranger, a scar on their face, a notch in the interrupted notebook of their life.

Summary: The narrator, a foreigner on whom almost nothing is known, not even the first name, is exiled in an anonymous European capital. He wanders accross this large, impersonal, grey, cold city, with a cinema, a post-office, various bars and a prefecture, going from one inhospitable place to another, depending of the necessities guiding him. He alternatively struggles to establish a romantic relationship with a young woman; to have his residence permit renewed – uncompromising descriptions of the applicants parked in front of the Prefecture, depressing offices, the staff’s indifference, merciless enumerations and lists of documents to be provided, with the precision of an entomologist-; and, above all, to write his first novel. Within an environment that becomes increasingly hostile to him and repetitive, he takes refuge in writing and continues to believe in a possibility of reconstruction and artistic accomplishment.

The title of the novel is both a reference to Camus’ The Stranger and a way to address the classification of books in France between “French” literature and another one called “Foreign Literature”. According to Lyamlahy: “My Foreign Novel is written in French, but is also “foreign” because of its narrator, its universe, its residence permit remain foreign, marginalized”.

Publication: Présence Africaine, 2017
Language: French
Rights: World rights to Présence Africaine
Genre: Debut Novel
Extent: 186 p.
Material: English sample by Annie Jamison

Bio: Khalid Lyamlahy was born in 1986 in Rabat (Morocco). A former civil Engineer, he holds a PhD in French & Francophone studies from Oxford University. He is currently Assistant Professor in Francophone Literature at the University of Chicago. Lyamlahy contributes to several literary magazines & academic journals. A Foreign Novel is his first novel. His second novel will be published by Présence Africaine in 2023.

Link to the book on Présence Africaine: Here

Rights inquiries: Here

© Khalid Lyamlahy

Sophie is still looking at me. She expects me to do something, to take initiative, to be more assertive. How can I not obey? I take a few steps forward, push open the double doors and step aside to let her pass first. She turns, surprised at my gesture, and overwhelms me with a sweet, knowing look that makes me believe in things that were previously inconceivable. In a split-second, I have forgotten everything: my novel project, the renewal of my residence permit, Lucien’s problems… Now, life seems to be giving me a new order of priorities. What if this is my first, last, and only chance? I reach my hands into the void to catch hold of a spectral truth that perpetually escapes my grasp. I am convinced that everything is being played out right here and now in this dark room, in front of this giant screen, with this green-eyed girl.

Publication: Présence Africaine, 2021
Language: French
Rights: World rights to Présence Africaine
Genre: Second Novel
Extent: 360 p.

Bio: Valérie Cadignan was born in 1972 in Martinique where she lived until she gratuated. Since 1998, she has been a magistrate and currently exercises her functions in metropolitan France.

Link to the book on Présence Africaine: Here

Rights inquiries: Here

© Valérie Cadignan

Le cimetière se trouve en plein centre-ville de Fort-de-France, ce qui ne lasse pas de surprendre ceux qui viennent d’ailleurs. En effet, alors même que les vivants s’efforcent généralement de tenir leurs morts en périphérie des villes, la cité foyalaise revendique avec fierté le fait d’avoir conservé en son sein quelques quatre-cents à cinq cents sépultures dont les plus anciennes remontent au dix-septième siècle. Ici, la mort est un peu chez elle.

Publication: Présence Africaine, 2021
Language: French
Rights: World rights to Présence Africaine
Genre: Second Novel
Extent: 408 p.

Bio: Olivier Ahmad Castaignède was born in Metz in 1973 and has lived in Singapore for twenty years. The polytechnic trained first as an embassy consultant before taking on various management positions in technology companies based in Asia. Since 2015, he has devoted himself mainly to writing and travelling, with a passion for Africa and Ethiopia in particular.

Link to the book on Présence Africaine: Here

Rights inquiries: Here

© Olivier Ahmad Castagnède

Quelles étaient les intentions de Sombath ? se demandait Niya, enfermée dans son bureau-placard. Même s’il se contentait de la dénoncer à la police, les conséquences pourraient être terribles pour elle : non seulement elle serait obligée de lui restituer son téléphone mais la plainte déposée par Sombath risquait de déclencher une réaction en chaîne, une suite sans fin de questions, qui finirait par mettre à nu tous ses mensonges, l’un après l’autre, chacun plus inavouable que le précédent. A Lalibela, Niya avait dévoilé le secret de sa vie à un parfait inconnu à qui elle avait ensuite volé son téléphone. Pouvait-elle continuer comme avant, comme si de rien n’était ?

Summary: “We suspect very little of the providence that misery offers.” It is through this terrible opening that we enter these atypical travelogues. The author outlines his reunion with Senegal after a long period far away. Delusions, pain, anger and sensitivity dominate the narration. He describes a country which, according to him, is wounded by immobility and complacency, supported by two pillars: tradition and religion. His gaze, sharpened with hindsight, illuminates and questions the ills of his country: life cut short by arbitrary death, excision, fatalism, mild fanaticism, homophobia, levirate… The book analyzes in particular the painful question of child trafficking, symptomatic ravages of religion excesses. He chants the beautifulnell and benevolent of Islam in his childhood, but pities and overwhelms his gravediggers.

Here is an original story: 15 nights, 15 portraits an indictment through which the author auscultates and accuses uncompromisingly the taboos and the central issues of Senegalese society.

Written in a crude and ironic style, Un Dieu et des Moeurs is an extremely courageous and sensitive book that mirrors a country and a continent. Elgas’ reflections are not here to please every readers, although they require awareness, making this book an urgent reminder.

Publication: Présence Africaine, 2015
Language: French
Rights: World rights to Présence Africaine
Genre: Short Stories
Extent: 336 p.
English Sample by Claire Wadie and Emma La Fontaine Jackson available on Asymptote Journal: Here

Bio: Elgas is a journalist and doctoral student at the University of Caen in Normandy. Born in Saint-Louis du Senegal in 1988, he grew up in Ziguinchor. A graduate in communication and political science, his research focuses on giving in Africa. In his writings, he strives to describe Africa unvarnished and without complacency. Un dieu et des moeurs is his first book.

Link to the book on Présence Africaine: Here

Rights inquiries: Here

© Elgas

We got our friends back. We did not see anything different in their eyes. Except perhaps a new cautiousness or reserve. The fact is that neither circumcision nor infibulation leave any trace on the face, nor any visible damage; their devastating effects are internal, invisible, and therefore private. The relative absence of obvious wounds renders any suggestion of mutilation pointless; it would only fall on deaf ears. These innocent faces remained just that. Nobody could detect even a hint of uneasiness. Was there really any uneasiness? In short, the answer is no, and conclusively so. The inevitable social outcome of this cultural ritual, once it has been set in motion, is a vicious cycle, a downward spiral, that destroys everything in its path. Even a crime is no longer a crime; it is simply a custom. Created over time. By tradition. That unshakeable, indestructible blade of the guillotine. Tradition.

Summary: After an absence of four years, Gabriel returns to Nairobi to find two women, Mbonoko and Nancy Gloria, mythical figures in the popular neighborhoods of the Kenyan capital. Their devouring ambition has driven them to establish a famous radio, become leaders, travel across the Atlantic, raise fighting cocks, and lead the Great Nubian-Luhya War of the autumn of 2004. Accompanied by a young taxi driver, Gabriel traces their whereabouts and obtains the opportunity to collect their stories from them. But the interviews do not go as planned. The words overflow. Gradually, a hallucinated city unfolds before his eyes. It will not leave him anymore. This otherworldly city that takes hold of him pursues him on boulevards, in the back of taxis, even in the empty corridors of his small hotel; it is the city of the oppressed and of the astonishment, the city of the disenchantment, whose history has never been taken seriously.

Publication: Présence Africaine, 2023
Language: French
Rights: World rights to Présence Africaine
Genre: Debut Novel
Extent: 328 p.

Bio: Jean-Baptiste Lanne was born in 1989. A geographer by training, he specialized in the study of urban lives in East Africa, conducting investigations, particularly among night watchers. This work led him to undertake extended research stays in Kenya, especially in Nairobi. He lives in Paris. Rives d’où je vous veille is his first novel.

Link to the book on Présence Africaine: Here

Rights inquiries: Here

© LAM

“Investigation, noir novel, fantasy novel? Rives d’où je veille is all of these at once. One happily dives into the discovery of a world where the small and the wretched regain power. And where the slum, carried by a lively language, sometimes wild to the point of dreaminess, reveals itself as the ultimate character: ‘Another city, yes, a counter-city, a daughter of fluids, a daughter of loins, superimposed on the first. In the back-and-forth of the hips, a city of contrary oscillation.

Kidi Bebey – Le Monde