Africa, frightening and attractive… It ignited Jeffrey Allen's blood like malaria fever. She bewitched his wife Mau. It became the forever lost homeland of their son Fintan. A vision, a dream that appeared to them on the banks of the Niger River, in the colonial backwater of the tiny town of Onitsha. Onitsha is a small port on the Niger River, the backyard of the sunset of the British Empire. Jeffrey Allen is brought here by dreams of the distant past, his wife Mau is a dream of the future. Onichi's red land will become their son Fintan's native land. Strangers to the colonial circle, petty, living in hatred, consumed by disappointment, they will grow together with Africa, which burns like a mystery, like a fever. Fierce and serene. About the author, the first novel brought recognition to J. M. G. Leclesio. It was "The Process" (1963), which won the Renaudot Prize. The writer received another prestigious award, the Paul Moran Prize, for The Desert (1980). And in 2008, Leclesio won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The novel Onitsha (1991) reflects childhood memories of a trip to Nigeria to visit his father in 1948.