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My first—and for now only—book was published by Éditions Le Monde pour Passager.
In it, I recount my first journey, as well as the reasons that drove me to leave.
Below is the back-cover blurb and a short excerpt.
She is leukemic; he is carefree. They meet, they fall in love, they dream—she succumbs to her illness. Out of love, and to keep his promise of making their dreams come true, he carries his grief onto the African roads. A sixteen-month wandering between laughter and tears, pain and rebirth. The story of a mad love and a motorcycle adventure in search of an authentic Africa. A deeply moving testimony, written more than ten years later, from which you will not emerge unscathed.
(…)
It took me ten years, a motorcycle accident, and a fractured pelvis to finish this book—often restarted, always unfinished. Ten years is a long time. What remains of all this? From suffering was born the dream. The dream gave birth to a new self; it gave rise to the man I have become today. Africa swallowed me like a boa swallows its prey. It began by gulping me down, then digested me throughout those months of travel. It wasn’t really painful—well, sometimes a little—but most of the time it was warm, humid, sensual, almost voluptuous. After that, it spat me out. But like the coffee beans excreted by the luwak, that small Indonesian animal, I emerged improved. At least, I think so. “Africa, my Africa.” I am not Black, I am not a Negro; I am white-skinned, as Nougaro sang, but African I became—through my heart, through my sweat, through my tears, through my joys during this essential pilgrimage. In becoming African, I became an adult. (…)
“This book is not available in an English edition.”