Overview

A Togolese novel that delivers a rich, intimate portrait of a scholar whose life is inextricably bound to Africa. For French ethnologist Maurice Boyer, Africa is more than a place—it's a dream, a puzzle, a mirror reflecting his desires and doubts. His years of fieldwork in Tèdi, Togo, where he lived among the Tem people and tried to illuminate their customs and rituals, marked him profoundly. Who was a friend and who was a foe? Which stories were true and which were illusions? As the years pass and the roles of Aurélie, his wife, and Safi, his former student, come into sharper view, Boyer finds himself wrestling not only with his own choices but with the legacy of knowledge itself. In a novel framed as a profound postcolonial quest, Sami Tchak explores Africa's rich, complex reality through this intimate story of a scholar wrestling with his own understanding of culture, knowledge, and history. The Continent of Everything and Practically Nothing grapples with whether assembling more data can truly capture the complexity of a continent, exposing how academic ambition, history, and emotion shape scholarship.

Full Product Details

Author:   Sami Tchak ,  Jeffrey Zuckerman
Publisher:   Seagull Books London Ltd
Imprint:   Seagull Books London Ltd
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9781803096322

ISBN 10:   1803096322
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   05 June 2026
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Awaiting stock  

Table of Contents

0. Prologue: “Daddy the Ethnologist!” The Golden Age of Impregnating and Impregnated Minds 1. Thanks to Georges Balandier 2. Safiou, My First Black Friend . . . 3. The Others We Love . . . 4. Lomé: Brief Notes In the Heart of This Village 5. And I Became Morou . . . 6. The Converts 7. The Blessing 8. Adultery 9. The Billy Goat and the Heifer 10. Close Enemy 11. The Imam and Me 12. Between Two Men 13. The Blood Stain 14. Delusions of Elephants 15. The Confession 16. The Thief and the Outsider 17. God Does Not Exist 18. The Imam’s Crime 19. “What Do They Need?” 20. The Theft, the Qur’an, and the Fire 21. The Yam and the Needles 22. The Toad and the Trial 23. Letters from Georges Balandier 24. The Betrayal of the Body 25. The Beauty of the Night 26. The Man Who Saw Everything 27. The True Night Is Death Lives and Speeches: Fermented Africa 28. Tèdi in All My Dreams 29. Safiou to the End of the Night 30. The Anthropologist and the Poet 31. Safiatou Kouyaté 32. Local Anesthesia 33. The Broker 34. Unending Vassalage 35. Speeches at Le Rostand 36. The Laugh of GauZ’ 37. Aurélie and Me 38. Safi’s Talk 39. Jacques and Maïmouna 40. Without Beating around the Bush 41. My Future Bears Safi’s Face 42. Fermentation Theory 43. “Trashcanning” 44. Babacar Ndiaye 45. Safi, the Sun of My Twilight

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Author Information

Born in Togo in 1960, Sami Tchak is a celebrated novelist and essayist best known for his novel Hermina. Jeffrey Zuckerman is a translator of French literature, including works by the artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Dardenne brothers, the queer writers Jean Genet and Hervé Guibert, and the Mauritian novelists Ananda Devi, Shenaz Patel, and Carl de Souza. 

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