PositiveThe Los Angeles TimesSarr turns his attention to the challenges of publishing while Black, exploring the gap between literature and the literary life ... It includes a host of voices and forms, skillfully rendered in Lara Vergnaud’s sensitive translation, from Faye’s diary entries to critical reviews of Elimane to the intricate oral narratives Faye collects during his search. The novel’s geography extends from Amsterdam to Buenos Aires with stops in Dakar, rural Senegal and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as if to leap over the question of center and periphery. This is a bold response to the threat of silence: to say everything, to be all of literature ... Perhaps what African literature needs is not an obliterating spotlight but an escape route into the solitude from which all writing springs.
