Askia drives through the streets of Paris in his taxi. One night, he picks up a young woman, Olia, who claims that she recognizes in his face the features of a man she once photographed. What if that man were his father, Sidi Ben Sylla? The father who migrated to northern latitudes long before Askia did so. The father he dreamed of when he was a child; the father whom he aches to meet. With Olia’s help, he attempts to retrace Sidi’s journey, which is as fleeting as a shadow.

Drifting night after night, Askia is only playing out his family’s curse. For a long time, his family was on the road: From Nioro, in the Sahel desert, driven out by drought, by hunger, travelling the roads under the suspicious gaze of villagers who did not want to see those dirty feet stopping for too long. 

As for so many people condemned to a life of roaming, Askia’s journey comes to a brutal conclusion, but not before changing him utterly, not before taking him to that city in the south and to his violent past. To a time when his taxi was used to wreak death in Three Hills.


  “Some are wet, just barely escaping from the sea; others have dirty feet because they flee, treading upon the earth in search of refuge, a land where they can rebuild their lives. Edem, haunted by a character whose taxi was used to lead those about to be executed to their final destination, has recreated a world where – beyond the facts and the recent history of his country, Togo – we find characters who belong to the world of pain. Whether they are in Africa or Europe, these cursed souls roam under the novelist’s complicit gaze. This novel, whose scope is universal, concerns us all.” – Tahar Ben Jelloun