Born in 1973, Guillaume Jan works as a reporter for French magazines. Thanks to his profession, he has been a gold seeker in French Guiana, shared the daily life of young Iraqis under Saddam Hussein’s empire, slalomed between mines in Kabul, spent time in the charming village of Al-Qaida in Yemen, followed the teachings of a French guru from Béziers in his Indian ashram, infiltrated a concubines’ network in China, played football with the official Grozny team and snooker with English gangsters. A resident of Paris, in 2009 Guillaume Jan published Le Baobab de Stanley, a bitter-sweet ballad set in the heart of Africa on Stanley’s footsteps. His first novel, Le Cartographe, was published in 2011 by Intervalles to much acclaim. In this one, his third book, he returns to Africa, following in the footsteps of Livingstone this time.