In L’Africain, a biography of his father and a project on memory and Africa – where Lé Clézio spent his childhood –, the author embarks on a search for his origins. In order to do so, he juxtaposes a narrative with images, roughly fifteen, chosen from his father’s collection, since the latter expressed himself more aptly via photography than through words. Le Clézio therefore searches for a memory that is “not only [his],” and which manifests itself in the occasionally problematic and often mysterious interplay between text and image.