South African novelist, involved alongside Nelson Mandela’s ANC, Louis-Ferdinand Despreez was advisor to several African heads of state. From his residence in Pretoria, he traveled the African continent for thirty years from Cape Town to Cairo and from Zanzibar to São Tomé. He now lives on a boat in the Indian Ocean and devotes himself only to writing. He published Short Memory (2006), The black man who walks on foot (2008) at Phébus, La Toubabesse (2016) at La Différence and Bamboo Song (2021) in Canoeing.
“When a Laotian veterinarian is invited to Havana in 1991, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, to meet Fidel Castro, we can expect an unusual adventure… Leader Maximo, who does not hide his love for cows, milk and ice cream, is toying with the project of repopulating the starving Cuban cattle herd by creating a huge farm in the meadows of the country of a million elephants, communist Laos. Doctor Bounthan, laureate of the Skryabina Academy in Moscow, and future deputy, is charged by his government with meeting Castro in order to bring back to Vientiane a valiant breeding stallion with the sweet name of Fidelito to impregnate Lao cows on the assembly line. Everything still seems logical and even almost possible at this point in the story… But then enter the scene without hitting Kennedy, Bush and Gorbachev, the CIA, the KGB, royalist rebels and the fate which is relentless against the young Fidelito and his mahout… In this Latin-Indochinese fable, the author leads us to the end of a refreshing geopolitical delirium which has the luxury of considering international relations in another light. A breath of fresh air for those who are tired of seeing the world walking straight into a wall that is not about to collapse…” (Éditions du Canoë)