Based on the examination of African novels to date, this contribution analyzes the relationship between the African novel and the phenomenon of totality. Following the tumultuous context of its emergence, the African novel displays great ambition of totality which expresses itself through the will to build something great and to reach a truth. It includes an important wealth of information akin to contemporary media inflation, leading to riddling space with representation which comes into competition with a real expansionist and which reinforces itself. But accomplished realism of the African novel is buoyed by an extraordinary figurative and scriptural energy, and there are no two novels alike. Among strategies used, it is fair to acknowledge that digression misleads the text in details and detours, thus betraying a novel which developed by successive delays.