Douo Papus, the narrator of this eloquent novel by a prize-winning French author, mourns his ravaged African childhood as he recounts how, at age five, he was handed over by his impassive father and grief-stricken mother to the missionary nuns in French colonial Africa, as was the custom in his village. Now, as an adult, he looks back at the nine years he spent in the convent school and the pain that has compelled him ever since to seek his absent father through the teaching of priests-and his mother's love in the arms of every woman he seduces. "A beautiful book. A classic."--The Independent