Synopsis

Valerio Montale has lived in Africa for over ten years. After trying the oddest jobs, he realized that drug dealing is a better living than being a freelance journalist. For this reason, every two or three months he flies to Guinea-Bissau to pick up a shipment of cocaine, which he then processes in the Ivory Coast, where he lives, and then sells to diplomats and humanitarian workers on the other side of the continent, in Addis Ababa. A nomadic, homeless life, devoid of any real reference points. With one exception: his six-year-old daughter Malaika, whom Valerio has entrusted to the care of his nanny Melat since her mother's death. He can't truly relate to her, or even be a father. But the little girl is kidnapped, and Valerio discovers that the kidnapping has something to do with his childhood best friend, Gaetano Curro, a seemingly enlightened businessman who is actually involved in the 'Ndrangheta. If he wants to see the little girl again, he will have to obey the instructions that will take him from one end of Africa to the other until he returns to his father's land, Calabria, on his own personal journey to hell. Meanwhile, in the background, a terrible civil war rages in the Ivory Coast. With the strength and expressive energy of someone who knows and experiences a place firsthand, Emilio Ernesto Manfredi writes a book that is both a violent and merciless noir and the most faithful and shocking account of Africa today, beyond banalities and clichés.